How to Draw Realistic Hands - Basics

hi i'm jono and if you're new here i do pencil drawings in this video i'm going to go over some basics on how to draw hands hands are notoriously difficult to draw i've struggled with them so much um so i just wanted to make a video describing some of the basics some basic measurements and some tips and tricks to help you guys draw some more realistic looking hands i think part of the reason that hands are so difficult is because they're incredibly dynamic we often see them from many different angles so it's hard to just give one tutorial that will cover how to draw hands from any angle so for this video i'm just going to draw a basic hand i think that'll be the easiest way for me to show measurements and we can grow from there also a huge thank you to skillshare for sponsoring this video let's jump in so i'm going to be drawing my own hand here first i'm going to start off just by drawing a square the the main body of the hand isn't a perfect square as you know it kind of tapers off to one side towards the pinky so i'm just going to taper it off there and that'll be that'll give us our line of the first joints of the fingers i like to try and get a bit of a three-dimensional feel of a joint as early as possible so i'll either draw the contour lines or try and get a blocked in three-dimensional shape just to give a bit of perspective to try and wrap my head around how the subject will occupy a three-dimensional space so for the fingers and this joint i'm going to draw them as cylinders so i'm just drawing in a little round first joint or knuckle um where the the fingers will connect to the main body of the hand okay let's get into the first measurement we're going to make the the first measurement will be the middle finger which is roughly the same length as the main body of the hand a bit of a strange thing with this measurement is that this only really works for drawing the back of the hand and i think this is also why hands are so difficult because it's hard to try and find a uniform formula to draw all of them from any angle but i think just understanding some of these measurements go a long way once we have the measurement of the middle finger we can then measure the index finger and the ring finger these i find at least on my hand are about a fingernail's length shorter than the middle finger and then the pinky finger is about two fingernails lengths shorter than the ring finger a fun little fact that you learn in art school is that fingernails are the preferred measuring system for measuring out hands some tips with drawing hands the fingers don't come straight out of the palm of the hand like this generally the fingers are splayed out a bit or naturally the fingers are splayed out of it another thing is also that there is usually a gap in between each finger which is quite important this gives you the opportunity to add a bit of shadow or some leading lines where the webbing of the fingers are and that just has a much more natural look i think when we learn to draw hands we generally draw the fingers coming straight out they're all usually straight against each other or flat against each other and this just looks very unnatural so keep that in mind with your hands the inverse of this as well with the hands or the fingers coming splayed out is that when you create a fist the fingers generally form a bit of a v they come inwards when you open your hand the fingers are splayed out like that and the pinky finger particularly generally is quite eccentric and flies off to the side knowing this can also just help your hand drawings look a little bit more expressive so that's a big one another thing to keep in mind is that the thumb is usually at a 90 degree angle to all those fingers if you were to just draw a hand like this and draw all the fingernails facing you as including the thumb it would look super weird the thumbnail is usually you can only see half of it um or if anything is being gripped then the thumb is actually opposite all the other fingers i know this is obvious but sometimes we don't think about that when drawing hands we have this idea or shape of hands in our mind and when we we try and draw them we often stick to that script and we don't realize some of these small little details that make a huge difference the last tip i have for you in terms of form and proportion would be to pay close attention to the fingernails often we kind of gloss over the fingernails because they're quite easy to draw and we don't really pay that much attention to them but the fingernails inform so much of what the hands are doing they can give you an idea of the rotational orientation the foreshortening or literally everything that's happening with the fingers you can almost figure out from the way that the fingernails are drawn so view them as one of your most important tools to get your hand drawings looking realistic before i go into the more aesthetic side of drawing hands some tips on the shading and some of the details i want to give a quick shout out to this video sponsor skillshare i'm really happy to be working with this company again i think they've done a really great job of helping people who are looking to use 2020 as an opportunity to develop new creative skills i know that for myself if i get a little bit stuck or just feel a bit like creatively blocked learning something new from other artists is an amazing way to start developing new ideas or just break out of this the shell that you might have put yourself into skillshare is an online learning community that offers membership with meaning whether you want to learn something new or just get help with your creative career skillshare empowers you to accomplish real growth the classes are designed to try and make it easy to learn without compromising the rest of your life if you want you can do shorter classes that can fit into your busy routine a class i really enjoyed was chantel martin's drawing on everything well i work in a very different way to her her class was so inspiring for me and got me thinking in ways that i hadn't before her style is so expressive and intuitive and freeing and for me that helped me just think a little bit out of the box that i found myself in it's incredibly affordable with an annual subscription being less than ten dollars a month and because skillshare are sponsoring this video you can sign up using the link in the description and get two months free premium trial so if you came to try it out and learn something new use the soft code to get started i'm drawing the fingers as cylinders at this point i'm not too concerned with them being perfect i just want to get an idea of how wide and how long they are and to see if they look like they're in proportion with the rest of the hand the next measurement to be aware of is where the joints sit from the back of the hand the second joint will be about halfway up the finger dividing it into two you can then draw the third joint just slightly more than halfway up the new divide that you've created it'll be about a fingernail's length below the actual fingernail i'm going back into the cylinders of the fingers giving them a little bit more shape my fingers are actually quite knuckly so the segments of finger between each joint are a little bit thinner than the actual joints themselves but depending on the hands that you're drawing um just try to pay attention to your reference and give the hands the characteristics that they need to look to look like the subject i'm paying close attention to the fingernails here the fingers are angled slightly away so there'll be a little bit of foreshortening happening here and then moving along i'm also paying close attention to the webbing to try and just inform a little bit about how the skin is wrapping around the fingers and how they're sitting next to each other you can do this easily with some leading lines [Music] okay so now most of the outline is done let's do some shadows and try and create that sense of volume [Music] some more tips when it comes to drawing a more detailed part of hands i think we we often look at drawings of hands or you know the more realistic ones and we focus in on the veins and the tendons and and how realistic and good they look and i think that's a little bit misleading a lot of artists tend to to focus on this without necessarily considering the volume or some of the more fundamentals and i see they they create these harsh lines to to try and render those details and that can really destroy your joints the the shadows cast on the back of the hand from tendons or veins are usually really soft even if they are harsh that'll probably indicate like an older hand or something but even then it's it's slightly blurred so i think try use like blending stumps or cotton wool or anything to to soften your pencil strokes or just when you draw draw very carefully and lightly and try and have these shapes merge in with the skin around them often these shadows and highlights also don't run the full length of that vein or the tendon they just there's a small section of it that's suggested and that's enough to get a really convincing effect i think when it comes to hands less is definitely more in terms of of detail and shadow another thing is also not to draw every single crease and wrinkle in the hands rather pay more attention to the folds in the skin and see which direction they're going rather than a crease because that'll inform how the skin is wrapping around the muscles and the bone and give you a much more realistic drawing rather than if you had just paid attention to only the creases or try to draw every single detail which often results in your drawings looking a little bit flat okay so that's it for this video i hope you guys found it helpful there's actually so much to go into with hands and anatomy that it's hard to to fit it all into one small video on youtube so i've been thinking about doing some kind of um like online group or something where i can upload like longer videos almost full-length drawing videos um and maybe just give some more like in-depth classes and stuff so if you're interested in something like that let me know um otherwise let me know in the comments what you'd like to see in the next one and as always thanks for the support i'll see you in the next one bye

Channel: Jono Dry

Views: 56,534

Keywords: art tutorial, fine art tutorial, hand drawing tutorial, jono dry, realistic pencil drawing, pencil drawing, pencil drawing tutorial, art lessons, Jono dry review, drawing, teaching how to draw, improve your drawing, art tips, realistic art, Jono Dry Art, Hand anatomy, Artist anatomy, Hand measurements, drawing measurements

Id: QwJf5ejqHqM

Length: 9min 39sec (579 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 24 2020