How To Draw Simple Hands (Patreon)

Hello my beautiful flowers!

Today I have a guide for you that covers one of the scariest topics in illustration: how to draw hands! I don’t think I have yet met an artist who did not start their journey being intimidated by drawing hands, and to be honest, hands are still one of the things that I find hardest to draw.

However, with lots of practice I’ve come to understand the basics of drawing hands and I no longer do everything I can to avoid drawing them, so I wanted to share my tips for how you can draw simple hands in your own illustrations.

Firstly, it’s important to know that they don’t have to be perfect. I don’t draw intricate, anatomically correct hands because it isn’t necessary for my style, so try not to stress too much about drawing great hands and just focus on hands that fit your style.

Secondly, start simple. For a long time I avoided drawing hands at all or drew them as noodles with no fingers, but over time started introducing simple hand shapes and slowly becoming more complicated.

And thirdly, use references as much as you need. Hands are complicated, so you don’t need to know how they look in every pose off-by-heart. You can use your own hands or find pictures on the internet of hands in the position you need them, and then use those to help your illustrations.

So let’s take a look at the basic form of the hand:

Basic Hand Proportions:

I like to start with the palm, and I usually draw it as a square that's narrower at the bottom than at the top. The fingers fan out above and are approximately the same height as the palm, so I mark that out with a curved line, and I mark another curved line for the knuckles which are approximately halfway between.

The thumb starts at the base of the palm and I usually draw it about the same height as the palm or a bit longer, and then I mark out where it joins back to the palm about halfway up. Then I sketch out the fingers from the top of the palm to the top of the second curved line. They’re all approximately the same thickness, with maybe the pinky being a little thinner.

Now I mark out the height of the fingers, and the middle finger is full height so that goes all the way up to the guideline we drew, but the fingers on either side are a bit shorter and the pinky is the smallest. I also mark out the wrist joint as an oval at the base of the palm that the forearm connects to.

Use your own hand as a guide if you’re ever not sure of the proportions, personally I don’t worry too much about getting things exactly right as long as they’re close.

So now that we know the basic proportions we can start looking at different hand poses and how to draw them.

More often than not I use my own hand as a reference for hand poses and then use my understanding of the basic hand proportions that we just studied to help simplify the reference to an illustration.

Let’s take a look at a few useful hand poses built with their basic framework up to a final outline. The first two I drew by looking at my hand in front of me as a reference, the second two I used a photo reference (I’ll share the photos with you in a little bit).

So I’ve made some reference photos for us to use (with the help of my boyfriend’s hand in a couple of them, too!). I recommend doing a little practice with them and seeing if you can draw some hands from them in your style, whether they’re simple or accurate.

Practising drawing hands will definitely help build your confidence with illustrating them in finished drawings, and getting a bit of practise means that if they look all wonky or weird nobody needs to know if you want to keep them secret (I’ve drawn so many wonky hands before)!

I hope you found this little tutorial helpful! Hands are tricky but they don’t have to be scary, and with practice they become less intimidating. I’d love to know if you find hands hard to draw or if you find them easy - let me know! 🥰

I’ve attached below the images from this guide and also a really simple pdf format version too, plus all of the hand reference images for you to use. If you find the references helpful then let me know and I’ll make more reference photos in future!