How to Draw HANDS and HAND POSES!

get allies and gentlemen welcome to draw with jazz I'm jazz and in this video we're going to talk about how to draw hands and also quite specifically how to draw hand poses this videos theme was voted on by you guys so make sure to go check out the link on the screen and in the description to go to jazzy Studios comm and vote on the theme of a future tutorial but for now this video is going to focus on like I said hands and hand poses and the reason I'm going to talk specifically about hand poses is because hands can be complicated they can do lots of different things on lots of different angles and especially if you're a beginning artist this can be really confronting and really scary because they are such an organic detailed complicated thing so in this video I'm going to start off by breaking down some of the complications and outlining some key visual aspects and construction based aspects of the hand that you can keep in mind when building your own hand poses and when sort of breaking down other hand poses that you're looking at whether they be your own hand that you're trying to figure out how to draw or looking at how other artists have drawn hands themselves and then in the second part of this tutorial we're going to go through a bunch of different poses more specifically for different post types that I use quite often those being the neutral hand the closed fist and a few variations on the closed fist the Renaissance hand which might sound a little weird but we'll go into that a bit later and the action hand and how to sort of draw a hand with a little more intensity with it so let's jump straight into the deep end in how to draw some of the aspects of the hand obviously as you can see here B the hand is a bit of a funky looking thing there's no simple one shape that makes the hand it's lots of little bits but by breaking it down into elements of smaller shapes and more simplified shapes we can then use those to build the poses out of and these shapes I'm going to break down for you now and the first one is the shape that makes up this main part the hand and it might be called the trapezoidal more accurately a trapezium but that's a technical term and I'm not a huge fan of technical term so we're going to keep it simple it's a wobbly rectangle a square there you go so from this wobbly rectangle a square which is bigger at the top a bit wider at the top than it is at the wrist you can see it tapers in towards the wrist this is the first shape this is the top of that construction shape for the hand and from here divided evenly into four parts the fingers emerge out of and when I draw my construction lines I basically draw little long blocks coming out of the end of that trapezium or the wobbly square so this is the basic basic basic basic shape beginning the hand we have out wobbly square and something is coming out and then as you can see the thumb sort of pokes out a bit so we sort of have this shape start to pop out and then we get the shape of the thumb coming out from there this may sound like it's really dumbing it down but the reality is as you can see you can alternate between these construction lines and the finish drawing and there's not a huge difference and this is really useful because it means that later on if you want to draw a hand in a relaxed pose on its side you can begin with that 3d sort of wobbly square shape have the fingers evenly splayed out from that end of that wobbly square and then we end up with a bit of a relaxed hand and that was actually really quick and easy to draw and it ends up looking fairly organic using the same sort of construction lines and I drew that in the best part of ten seconds now obviously it takes a little bit of practice I'm used to sort of throwing out construction lines for hands so don't stress if you can't do it very quickly you're going to get used to using these shapes but the point I'm trying to demonstrate is if we use simple shapes to build up and construct from the process becomes a lot easy and that's the first thing I want to mention the next thing I want to cover is the that the fingers come out on oftentimes people think that a hand looks like this a hand has four fingers and they are all kind of stand beside each other and they have a specific angle that they go up and down on and blah blah blah yuck the reality is we never hold our hand like this because that looks stupid and it's uncomfortable our fingers naturally sort of spread apart when they relax and actually sort of bend forward a little bit now we're not going to go into too much detail but what I want to focus on in regards to this point is that the fingers are going out on a slight angle here you will notice that the distance between the angle of these two at the top of the index finger and the pinky finger they're they're much sort of further apart now we don't necessarily splay our hands like that but the point I'm trying to make is much like how Wolverines claws go out and spread apart somewhat from one another our hands do the same fairly naturally now they can go wider and they can of course come in together but in terms of going for an organic look follow this general sort of angle and this is going to come in useful in other aspects which we'll get to it's important to keep in mind when drawing the closed fist reason being is that the closed fist is the reverse of the open hand how with the open hand the fingers are sort of spread apart like this when the fist is closed the funny thing is the angle of these fingers is actually coming inwards and you'll notice that in my closed fist drawing here and I'm just going to bring the visibility down so you can see it a little clearer the index finger and the pinky finger are angling more towards the middle of the hand almost pointing in that inward sort of direction now it's important to keep that in mind simply because if we have various hand poses when let's say we have a hand splayed out with all the fingers sort of scrunching towards the center like this in the inner what's the word like a dramatic sort of pose the pinky is going to come in towards the middle as the rest of the fingers spread out and this is just something that you can keep in mind to go for a really natural look but as you can see here with my very rough construction sketch of a hand sort of holding itself out like this we have when the fingers are sort of inwards pointing in towards the the inner palm and then when the fingers are stretched out they're going on that outward angle and as they sort of close in and get into that middle space they follow that angle inwards towards the palm so that's a pretty important thing to keep in mind because we're keeping that organic flow as the hand opens things are spread out as it's closed everything's coming in towards the center of the palm the next thing I want to talk about in terms of simple and fairly straightforward methods in drawing a hand that looks decent is drawing flat tops and bumpy bottoms now we don't want to overdo this too much but just to sort of demonstrate my point in this hand in the sidon pose here what you can see happening is in the joints of the fingers the top of the hand is actually fairly straight between these areas that are bending and underneath the hand the more the finger is bent and curled in the more these bumps sort of gather together so with a completely straight finger we might have these bumps being fairly stretched out but the point is the bumps are still there and the top of the finger is still straight now when we have a finger that's completely in the opposite way curled all up and all bunched up like this these bumps are sort of pushing against each other and getting fatter towards the bottom as that angle sort of goes in so we have the flat tops and the bumpy bottoms and this is pretty important to keep in mind because in most hand poses the fingers are either going to be straight or bendy well they either are going to be straight or bendy there's no if buts or maybes about it so when you're going for one or the other it's just important to sort of keep that in one that is another visual element that's pretty consistent it's similar with the thumb too though the thumbs a bit of an odd creature because it comes in a bit of a weird angle but the top of the thumb I usually like to draw straight and then have nice and bumpy especially around the fleshy part at the base of the thumb the next thing I want to mention in regards to the flat tops and bumpy bottoms of the fingers is that the the ends of the fingers are rounded when you look at your hands they're sort of rounded but visually I tend to find if you draw the end of a finger really rounded like this and then you draw a fingernail exactly as it might look like this it tends to look really weird so I like to over accentuate the the flat top Ness by having a more square end and then tapering it off and having a rounder bottom and then with the fingernail actually like to have a square end and then have a round top that's closer to the inside of the hand and I intend to find that looks a lot more natural even though you don't really see fingers that look particularly like that in reality they look more like this but for some reason I tend to find that visually it works better in the illustration to have fingers that you know do that and while we're talking about finger nails are we're going to finish off our little introduction on some of the visual aspects of the hands by talking about details as you can see with my little illustration of the hand here there are lots of little bumps and little lines across at certain areas and I just want to briefly touch on where it's important to add detail now if we have detail then we need to know where it had it because less is more if we have too many lines and as you can see by looking at your own hands there are lines everywhere we could have like four lines in that joint on each finger we could have like you know the cuticles and we could have all the wrinkles and the knuckles and the veins and it just becomes really busy and ends up making the hand look kind of decrepit and old so I tend to find that the most important visual detail to add when we're starting to add detail is simple shape for the nail really simple shape not overdoing it just kind of rounding out nail and I also think it works best to have the nail reach the very end of the finger so to not have additional detail by having two lines here I think it simplifies things and it just looks visually cleaner the next thing is if we're adding detail to the joints of the hands just at that main midpoint joint at the first joint up from the knuckle just having a simple little line especially if the the knuckle or finger is bent really not much more than that and then of course if we're going into even more detail just adding a very slight indication as to the bumpy area of the knuckles not even that much detail in fact you could simplify this by having a simple line that sort of goes across that top area that indicates that there's a rise in the knuckles without individually outlining each of the knuckles so I hope that gives you a bit of an idea as to some certain visual aspects that can carry on through all of your hand poses and we're going to sort of draw from these little elements as we go through the hand poses and the first of the hand poses that we're going to be drawing today is the neutral and we start off by drawing our basic construction shapes and remember that the the wonky square shape or the trapezium is actually a three-dimensional shape so draw it is a bit of a box with some thickness for the actual depth of the palm from there in a relaxed hand pose I like to draw the index finger most open and the pinky finger most close but not to an extreme so the index finger isn't fully straight and the pinky finger isn't fully scrunched up they're both sort of just edging towards them and their fingers as they go along are following that pattern the thumb is pretty relaxed you know in the same sort of position each time and on every angle that this hand holds we still get that pretty relaxed stationary look by having the fingers closest towards the pinky and the peaking itself a little more killed in and the index finger and the thumb mostly relaxed and and outwards this pose can work with the hand both bent forwards or backwards or straight on from the rest and the effect that we get is something that looks pretty neutral and nice and relaxed as you can see all of these hands follow the same sort of basic patterns and the same basic idea even though it's on different angles so by learning to use the construction work to draw the hand and by learning to commit certain poses on certain angles to Lemery you can then use these on your characters in a pretty straightforward way once you've practiced them and committed them to your little tool belt of hands that you can use so this is the first and often the most common used hand pose that I use or come across which is just a neutral relaxed hand next we're going to talk about the fist now as I mentioned previously when all of the fingers are coming in there is a slight angle for these four fingers they're all sort of coming towards the center of the palm very slightly so this is the same fist that I drew before basically but I wanted to reiterate this angle and the importance of just having the slight angle being used because there are variations of the fist of course there is the pointing finger there are the demon horns there's the peace sign there's the thumbs up they all follow this basic pose and when you get used to drawing the fists on different angles you can actually make all of those variations without much effort once you know how to draw a closed fist well and then an open hand well on different angles creating the variations like I just mentioned is pretty straightforward another thing that I want to mention which is pretty good to keep in mind and looks nice visually is that the tops of the knuckles are sort of on this angle and then the next row of knuckles is on more of an extreme angle the reason for this is that the inside of the palm this fatty part of the hand is also on this angle and most of the mass is in this upper area here so therefore this index finger can only curl down so much where the pinkie finger can actually get right into this nook and cranny here and that sort of gradients along as the hand is closed therefore as the fingers most towards the pinkie can get most inwards towards the palm with a closed fist they do and we get more of an extreme angle with the next row of knuckles this seems like a bit of an over-the-top thing to mention but it's actually pretty important and when you draw a hand on another angle I'll show you how this sort of happens in action so we start off with our basic hand construction our trapezoid shape what believe Square whatever you want to call it you know what I'm talking about by now and we then start to add in the details of the hand but with a closed fist we don't necessarily need to draw each finger one by one because that's going to get really complicated especially when everything's closed in here so what I actually like to do is begin by drawing the shape of the thumb in its closed fist position and this is going to simplify things a lot more because basically we extend the top of this shape to encompass the mass that the fingers are going to follow we just sort of make it lump out a bit and then from there we outline where the fingers are going to go but before we draw the individual fingers I actually like to outline the angle of the knuckles because then from there it's as simple as following our little outline here in drawing each of the following fingers in their various positions and then we end up with a hand shape that is pretty organic looking so that when I draw the outline of this fist remember with flat tops and bumpy bottoms we get something that looks much more organic and natural it's also good to draw the detail of those knuckles that go on the angle so we're sort of pointing out where the angle is different from the top of the head so it's a pretty rough example but you're sort of getting the idea that I'm getting towards the other thing that we can do of course is change the basic construction shape we're using so rather than using that trapezium shape thing that we use for an open hand we can use a bit more of a box so let's say we have the wrist coming in and we're going to have a fists closed with the thumb facing forward we can outline a bit of a box first indicating where the top of the hand and the knuckles are going to go then start to outline where the thumb is going to go on top of that and we get something that looks like a bit of a square boxing glove like this from there we can just start to roughly outline the position of the first four finger to use as a bit of a foundation point remember to keep our tops flat and our bottoms bumpy so to speak and then to follow the angle of these knuckles as the hand is sort of coming in on this shape and we're sort of pulling away from our construction shape a little bit to make sure we're catering to these angles of the fingers sort of coming in like that but then we end up with a bit of a fist shape that looks slightly more organic and that when we draw our lines on top tends to look a bit more fitting once again keeping the details minimal and in a hand shape like this the most important details to outline would be the knuckles because they're really showing a lot of the angle and a lot of the movement and position of their that fingers themselves and then with a really closed fist I actually sometimes like to draw just a little line or two here in the palm section because you can see that when you tighten your hand it really sort of starts to show a little bit of detail there because of the strain now a quick and easy thing to keep in mind in regards to drawing the the closed fist in various forms is to follow that angle so we have the splaying angle I suppose you could call it so that when the index finger is pointing out it's just sort of going out on that straightforward angle making sure that it's open up and to the correct length and all of that but let's say we have the the demon horns hand shape the pinky finger is actually going to continue out on an outwards angle as well to follow that and we get much more of an organic look and it looks a bit silly if they're both completely straight on which can be done but naturally the hand is actually going to splay it out like that and this goes for all of the other fingers making sure to follow the finger curve that most how to draw hand tutorial show that you'd be fairly familiar with by now with each of the fingers as they emerge and pop out of the open hand so you can see basically how the fingers go outwards and inwards following that angle another really simple way of drawing the fist which is nice to sort of commit to memory and is really useful is drawing the fist from behind so basically if I draw my trapezius shape I'd keep forgetting what it's called but I think that's it that is almost the shape of the closed fist because we have the bit that pops out which is for the thumb and then sometimes I like to add little bumps to indicate some fingers or even have the first knuckle out a little bit more extremely to accentuate that additional angle but that's basically the construction which means that our line work can then go on top to draw the closed fist I also like to show the bumps for the knuckles and then start to indicate the fingers that are splaying out on that angle but that ladies and gentlemen is a closed fist and as you can see it's pretty void of a huge amount of detail and it's fairly easy to make look simple and organic to get something that looks decent and that's a pretty easy hand posed to remember and to use especially when holding things like swords or weapons or you get the idea punching poses and all that stuff really simple sort of hand our position and pose to use I'm going to briefly touch on two more hand poses the second last one is what I like to call the Renaissance hand pose this is similar to the relaxed hand pose except the fingers are a little more direct and in a little bit of a grouping we have the middle two fingers sort of connected together now this might sound a little bit odd and the reason I call it the Renaissance hand pose is because in a lot of classical art and Renaissance art this is actually opposed that is used quite often so basically if we follow our initial construction of our squarish trapezoidal funky shape that I keep changing the way I talk about it and have the thumb in the same sort of position we might have it in a relaxed pose and then the wrist sort of coming out from behind the first finger is again as it would be in a normal relaxed pose then the middle two fingers I like to sort of draw at once and grouped together like so and then the pinky is a little further out still and that is the basic idea of the Renaissance pose where we have the the middle two fingers grouped together I don't quite know why this is a fairly common classical hand pose it looks elegant it can be used in various circumstances but in particular when something is flourishing or something as graceful it's a really nice hand pose to use and can be shown on various angles so for example if I wanted to show the same pose from the top we begin with our trapezius presumed shape okay either stop trying to talk technically because I'm not good at it now we have the the index finger and then the next two fingers sort of splayed out following that and of course having the the ring finger a little shorter and then the pinky finger and we have a little bump for the palm the wrist emerging and then but the thumb is somewhere behind there I'll just sort of shade that in and then for both of these hands I can basically just draw my lines on top and as you can see the result is a fairly elegant looking hand now these are all pretty roughly sketched so normally I would spend a little more time on all of these hand poses so if anything feels a little off please forgive me but basically it's great to look up reference images and if any of you are interested I have a of an Anatomy reference and post pack which includes hand in some poses as well that you can use and other things to keep in mind when drawing a hand are sort of from the top and on this angle here is that we just sort of allude to a little bump here to where the thumb would be popping out and it's as simple as that show that the thumb is sort of emerging out from behind there and that is the release on spose which as you can see can be shown on different angles and is a nice way to draw a hand in an elegant fairly relaxed way but a little more directed than the normal relaxed post and then the very final hand pose that I want to talk about is the action pose and that's somewhere between the fist and the relaxed where basically that the fingers are starting to curl up their tents they're not closed in they're not open out we're getting this sort of claw happening in the hand and it can happen in different ways there are really extreme ones there are just sort of more open ones but it's more of an active looking hand I'm going to draw two examples of a active action hand pose one will be more extreme and one will be more subtle so we're going to start off with a little bit more of a relaxed action pose we're going to do this a little more front on maybe on a slight angle angling towards say the pinky so we're going to begin with our funky squarey shape and we're going to have the thumb stretched out quite a bit and then reaching in quite at an extreme angle because it's a really active pose from there we're going to have the pinky much more in towards the hand and as we sort of have outlined the finger angles I'm going to have the pinky in towards the palm but still sort of splayed out a bit and as the fingers are sort of moving along towards the index finger they're going to be opening up more and more like so following that angle until we have the index finger which isn't fully open it's a little more bent still but we're getting a bit more of this dynamic action feeling from here we can start at outline where the detail will go so we can see the nails on these two fingers and then this finger is a little more bent forwards than ours going to sort of be half way showing in fact I'm not quite happy with the angle of that finger it looks a bit bit odd so I'm just going to have it a little more closed off and a little higher than the middle finger but still more inwards towards the palm and that's something I'm fairly happy with and you can start to see that we have a bit more of a strained a little bit more of a tempt hand pose here now we can just use this to draw our line work on top so we get the basic idea here it's not the most elegant looking thing in the world but I'm sort of communicating the action idea things are a little bit more tense one thing I like to do when drawing an extreme action poses have a really bent wrist so I'm going to move this pose so that the the wrist is bent forwards quite a bit and then we have the fingers arched backwards and that we get this really intense look here and likewise with the thumb really pulling it back I'll just move this here so you can see it so it's a bit out of the way and because we have this angle that we're following the pinky finger is going to be a little bit more visible visible at the bottom there - it's really scribbly at the moment but they're my basic construction lines so when I follow these to draw the details we first begin with the thumb because it's appearing at the front there and then we have this front finger coming up high remember our flat tops and bumpy bottoms so during our bottoms nice and bumpy and indicating these curves here and showing a little bit of an extra bump behind this finger for the knuckle because the skin is going to be bunched up a little bit then sort of curving the top of the hand and showing that angle downwards but because this extreme pose is on such an intense sort of angle I'm also going to show the back part of the hand connected to the pinky here really sort of popping out there too because the this back pinky has really scrunched downwards and outwards so that's one way I like to go about action poses on a bit more of an extreme angle and with an extreme sort of pose to it and there all of the general poses I wanted to carry you through starting off of course with our neutral hand then we sort of went through the fist and some alterations of the fist then our little Renaissance pose and then the action pose and the interesting thing about this is with these various poses you'll find that a lot of the drawings you do once you have committed some of these to memory and are comfortable with them on a few different angles you recycle there's a lot and they're really usable so once you sort of find references use them and maybe even look at other artists how do they draw those hands how do they draw those hand poses take some techniques from them and sort of commit some of those two memory steal it a little bit you know what I mean because once you've got these down to a point where you're comfortable with them you'll find that drawing hands as a whole is far less intimidating and you'll find that it's adaptable to many variations so the fist poses can be used when drawing different expressions of that closed fist or withholding objects or whatnot the neutral hand may be drawn quite a lot just simply with the characters who are standing around and not doing very much and you'll find that you'll use one or two of those angles of the relaxed pose quite a lot and then of course making sure to keep in mind some of the things that we discussed earliest on the flat tops and bumpy bottoms the angles of the fingers going out and then coming in and that where the details of the hand go and using the construction lines this has been a bit of an over-the-top perhaps convoluted sort of lesson but I really hopes to discuss quite a lot about the different ways that you can approach during hands in this video and I hope that you found it helpful and informative and enjoyable once again make sure to go vote on the future tutorial by checking out the link in the description and on the screen thank you so much for watching and until next time I'll see you later thanks for watching if you enjoyed this video subscribe to my channel to see new content every week check out more of my stuff by clicking the annotations over there you can get the reference files for this tutorial by clicking the link in the description and if you want the reference files for all the tutorials I've ever made check out the tutorial archive if you're looking for a great place to collaborate explore or share your own content head over to newgrounds.com that's it for now and until next time see you later

Channel: Jazza

Views: 3,324,020

Rating: 4.9188442 out of 5

Keywords: josiah, brooks, jazza, jazzastudios, animation, game design, media, newgrounds, armor games, flash, humor, drawing, how to draw, adobe, photoshop, cintiq, 24hd, Adobe Flash (Software), tutorial, Artist, Painting, Educational, Software Tutorial, CS6

Id: 2CmrMRXoA8Q

Length: 30min 34sec (1834 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 21 2015