ARTSPO

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omg dont be ashamed at all!! Hands are generally tough to get used to, lots of artists struggle with it! so dont be ashamed i feel you.

and I actually have made a hand anatomy guide before in fact! If you want to get better at drawing hands I def recommend you learn the basic anatomy first. Please check out the ones I made, I try to make it simple and easy to understand:

Artistic Anatomy: Hands Part 1

Artistic Anatomy: Hands Part 2

There’s my guide to the anatomy, but here’s some more tips that I’ve noted to myself that I’d like to include

First off, I’d like to just note on the fingers: if you pay close attention to your own hand, you may notice the fingers are ever ever so slightly curved inward. It’s a very subtle detail, but I noticed that, despite how slight it is, it can make a hand look more lively, and less stiff.

Second, the “M” on the palm! Your hand moves in many ways, and because it does it creates creases in your hand. The most prominent creases appear to make an M shape; this is handy to remember for what I’m going to talk about next. (It also could be a “W” I guess, or to be more specific a “ )X( “; just think of it in whatever way helps you remember!)

SO now that you see the M, draw your hand as a basic blocked shape and add your details. As you do, you can see that the M divides the palm into four basic parts!

When the hand moves, parts A, B, or C of the palm, alone or in different combos, will create the general poses that the hands do normally. These parts are the parts that move, with D being stationary, no matter what!

Here’s a chart of all the possible combos. Once you have down what part of the hand moves for a certain pose, you can change up the fingers and tweak it a bit to do what you need to make it more specific!

This is simply my method of drawing hands. God knows there are hundreds of tutorials out there by other artists, but personally, this way helps me the best (after learning the anatomy first). 

This way I can divide the hand and combine the parts in any such way I need! 

Hands take a lot of effort to grapple, and you need to practice them a lot, especially foreshortening of the hand; that’s really something you need to learn through your own studies. Look at your own hands, draw hands from life, from magazines, shows, comics; just draw hands! You’ll eventually figure out a method that works best for you. So to get better at drawing hands; draw hands!! And don’t stress over it, have fun with it!

Avian wing / flight style refs

some beautiful wing flight motion refs I found for Watercast!! 

I’ve got a few generators you can use.

Need some clothes?

Try Here Here or Here Definitely here Steam punk clothing Char Style preference Dress

Need an Appearance idea?

Humanoid generator? check Non-Humanoid? Got that too and this and maybe this Need Monsterpeople?  I’ve got you. Maybe you need Cats?

Need some details and shit like that?

Bam Backgrounds and stuff? yep Personality. you need that shit Need something fandom related? World-building? location? got ya City generator hell yeah make your own god damn laws Oh shit someone died Landscape. CHAR DEVELOP QUESTION GEN Profile Thingy Have some dates Quirks

You thought I was done? Nope. Motha. Fuckin. Names.

So many fuckin names MOTHERLOAD OF NAMES

Plant Names Magic Book title

Just search ur ass up some names man

Items. Yeah. You heard me.

Medicine? got it Items out the ass more items wow

Other shit.

Wow Yep Plots More writing stuff This site has everything so fucking go for it Need AUs? How the shit did these two meet? Fanfic plots. you bet your ass. (tag me in the shit u write i wanna see what you get) What does it do thing (you come up with a better name for this one. fuckin fight me.

Watch the full lesson above to get all the info on drawing hands from imagination

Drawing Hands from IMAGINATION

In this lesson I’ll show the process that has helped me to draw hands accurately from imagination. It’s also a great process if you’re drawing from reference. 

The Idea

The first step is to get a clear idea of the hand you’re gonna draw. Don’t jump in blindly and start drawing. Figure out the angle we’re looking at the hand from. Imagine this clearly in your mind before you make a mark. And you always have your own hand that you can use to figure it out.

Once the idea is clear, we’ll start constructing the hands using simple forms.

The Palm

The palm areas can be simplified to a boxy form with equal height and width. That’s a good place to start, but if you want to be a little more precise, it’s good to start thinking about the nuances. 

We’re looking at this box from the top. We can see the right side and the front plane of the knuckles. Before we add the fingers, let’s split the front plane into 4 parts. That way we know where each finger extrudes from. Don’t forget about the foreshortening!

If you can do that, you have a really good starting point and you’re on your way to drawing an awesome hand.

The Fingers

At this point you can start extruding the finger segments, but it helps me to start with some kind of gestural or wireframe guideline. I’m gonna give you 3 options that you can choose from. Everyone has their preferences and different poses might call for different approaches.

1. Mitten - If the fingers are grouped together, you can try to imagine a mitten shape for all of them. If one or more of the fingers is separate from the group, draw it separate. Group the ones that you can and decide if they’re bending.

2. Dots ‘n Lines - Another way is to throw down some lines and dots for the knuckles. This can help figure out the position and length of each segment with minimal lines that are easy to adjust.

3. Gesture - The third option is to draw the gesture of each finger. Don’t worry about separating each phalanx. Ignore the joints and just identify the motion of each finger. Do this very lightly.

Different poses will call for different approaches or combination of them. And, everyone has their preferences. Try them out and see what you like.

Now let’s add some structure to the fingers. Usually I like to use cylinders for each segment. Cylinder because they’re easier and quicker than boxes. And it’s pretty easy to turn a cylinder into a box later, if I want to indicate the rotation of that cylinder. An indication of the box at the joint is enough.

There’s 12 segments in the fingers, and that doesn’t even include the thumb. That’s a lot of cylinders and boxes to think about. It’s tempting to rush through them, but fight the feeling of urgency. Get them in the right spot, with the right proportions and perspective. Do your best to keep your lines light and clean throughout the construction process. Don’t scribble and create a mess. Think through the drawing.

The Thumb

In the hand bones lesson we learned about the triangular box for the base of the thumb. This triangular box can be stretched, squished, and rotated depending on the position of the thumb’s metacarpal. Look at your thumb and see all the different ways it can move. Sometimes I imagine the metacarpal bone to make sure it’s position is believable and the length relates correctly with the others.

The Wrist

On the surface, the wrist curves to fill the gap between the palm and forearm. So, a good place to start is the 2×4 form of the forearm bones. The wrist would be a transitional plane when there’s a bend. Look at Bridgman for inspiration when designing the wrist. Here’s a few different poses so you can see how the wrist behaves. Notice how he puts a little step down from the forearm to the hand. It’s a nice design that can make your drawing more interesting and dynamic.

Muscles

Learn about them in Part 1.

Shading and Details

sup, ya i can try, its going under a read more tho!

1. don’t over use the water colour tool / blur tool to blend things or try and not use it, at all? try and find other brushes, usually with low opacity and high blending and textures that you can use to blend your colours. I use my acrylic brush for this, as seen and better explained here. It gives the image texture.

You see here when I drew satya: 

Not the best in explaining things but I gave it a try!

This is usually how I do it more or less, but I also look at a ton of refs.  Never be afraid to grab a ref and lightbox/lighten the opacity of it and draw over it until you start understanding the body. Also long swooping curves are great and it’s better to overshoot it than under. 

Just in case you forget this exists.

You can browse the most popular ones or search for certain colors, themes, and even specific hex codes!

When you find one you like, you can download a wallpaper swatch of it and also select the specific colors it uses to look at more palettes that use those same ones.

Color Tutorial Part 4: Color Picking and Palettes

Part 1 : Value - link Part 2 : Hue and Saturation - link Part 3 : Saturation & Color Mixing - link Part 5: Digital Coloring Method - link

Other Tutorials - link

I’ve pulled apart my working process on these Feel Good Guys to use as examples for an extension of the Character Body Language workshop ran with Dani Cresp as part of Homecooked Comics Festival. I’ll be recording and uploading a tutorial walking through drawing a walk in photoshop and talking through the four poses that make a step, line of action, avoiding tangents and overlapping action.