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Here’s a quick look at the bone structure of the hand (left). In blue, the eight carpal bones, in purple, the five metacarpal bones, and in pink, the 14 phalanges.
As many of these bones cannot move at all, we can simplify the basic structure of the hand: the diagram on the right is all you really need to remember.
Note that the actual base of the fingers, the joint that corresponds to the knuckles, is much lower than the apparent base formed by flaps of skin. This will be important to draw bending fingers as we will see later.
Based on the above, a simple way of sketching the hand is to start with the basic form of the palm, a flat shape (very much like a steak, but roundish, squarish, or trapezoidal) with rounded angles, then attach the fingers :
If you have a hard time drawing fingers, it’s very helpful to think of them, and draw them, as stacks of three cylinders. Cylinders are easy to draw under any angle, taking away much of the headache of drawing fingers in perspective. Observe how the bases of the cylinders are exactly the folds you need to draw when the finger bends.
This is important: The joints of the fingers are not aligned on straight lines, but fall onto concentric arches:
In addition, fingers are not straight, but bend slightly towards the space between MF and RF. Showing this even subtly gives life to a drawing:
Let us not forget the fingernails. There is no need to always draw them, indeed they are a degree of detail that only looks right when the hands are seen sufficiently close up, but we are not usually taught how they should look, and because of this, I for one couldn't make them look right for a long time. Here are some notes on the fingernail:
Now, taking the (apparent) length of FF as our base unit, we can roughly put down the following proportions:
I said "roughly" because these do vary with people, sometimes a lot, but remember that deviating from the norm on paper can look wrong. If in doubt, these measurements will always look right.
The basic shape is only one challenging aspect of the hand; the other may be the detailing of folds and lines. Who hasn't been frustrated by drawing a hand and not being able to get all these lines to look right? Let's look at fold lines and some measurement details:
Note also, in the diagram above, how the fingernails are not drawn fully but indicated in a subtle way appropriate to the overall level of detailing (which is rather higher than necessary, for purposes of showing all the lines). The smaller the hand you're drawing, the less detail you want in it, unless you want it to look old.
I didn't mention the lines of the hand above, so let's take a look at them closely here:
Now, what do we see when the hand is extended and seen sideways?
Note also that when seen from the outside, the palms shows another, new contour line. It starts at the wrist and, as the hand turns more, joins up with the LF line, until it covers up the Th base:
Detailed articulation implies movement, and the hands move constantly. Not just for functional uses (holding a mug, typing) but also expressively, accompanying our words or reacting to our emotions. It's therefore no surprise that drawing hands well requires understanding how the fingers move.
Let's start with the thumb, which works alone. Its real base, and centre of movement, is very low on the hand, where it meets the wrist.
The other four fingers have little sideways movement and mainly bend forward, parallel to each other. They can do this with a certain degree of autonomy, but never without some effect on the nearest fingers; try for instance to bend your MF alone, and see what happens to the rest. The Th alone is completely independent.
When the hand closes into a fist and the fingers all curl together, the whole of the hand maintains a cupped shape, as if it was placed against a large ball. It’s just that the ball (here in red) gets smaller and the curvature stronger:
When the hand is fully extended (on the right), the fingers are either straight or bend slightly backwards, depending on flexibility. Some people’s fingers can bend back 90º if pressure is applied against them.
The fully closed fist is worth a detailed look:
When the hand is relaxed, the fingers curl slightly – more so when the hand is pointing up and gravity forces them bent. In both cases, the FF remains straightest and the rest fall away gradually, with the LF being the most bent. From the side, The gradation in the fingers makes the outer 2 or 3 peek out between FF and Th.
LF frequently “runs away” and stands isolated from the other fingers – another way of making hands look more natural. On the other hand, the FF and MF, or MF and RF, will often pair up, “sticking” together while the other 2 remain loose. This makes the hand look more lively. RF-LF pairings also occur, when the fingers are loosely bent.
Since the fingers are not the same length, they always present a gradation. When grasping something, like the cup below, the MF (1) wraps the most visibly around the object while the LF (2) barely shows.
When holding a pen or the like, MF, RF and LF curl back towards the palm if the object is held only between Th and FF (pick up a pencil lightly and observe this). If more pressure is applied, MF participates and straightens up as it presses against the object. Full pressure results in all the fingers pointing away as shown here.
As we have seen, the hand and wrist are remarkably articulated, each finger almost having a life of its own, which is why hands tend to stump the beginning illustrator. Yet when the hand starts to make sense, we tend to fall into the opposite trap, which is to draw hands too rationally – fingers carefully taking their places, parallel lines, careful alignments. The result is stiff and simply too tame for a part of the body that can speak as expressively as the eyes. It can work for certain types of characters (such as those whose personality shows stiffness or insensitivity) but more often than not, you’ll want to draw lively, expressive hands. For this you can go one of two ways: add attitude (i.e. add drama to the gesture, resulting in a dynamic hand position that would probably never be used in real life) or add natural-ness (observe the hands of people who aren’t thinking about them to see the casualness I’m referring to). I can’t possibly show every hand position there is, but I give below examples of constrained vs. natural/dynamic hand:
*Note in this particular case – trained fighters will always hold their fingers parallel while punching (as in the forced position), otherwise they may break their knuckles.
Hands vary individually just as much as facial features. Males's hands differ from female's, young from old, and so on. Below are some existing classifications, but they don't cover the whole range of characters a hand can have. Character is a good word because it's most useful to draw hands as if they were characters with their own personality: delicate, soft, dry, callous, uncouth and so on. (See Practice Time)
This is really about the proportion of fingers to hand:
Even fingernails are not all the same! Well, Mother Nature gives us flat or round nail bases, really, and the different ways of styling the nail are man-made.