There are no long, straight lines in this sketch, for which a 'candle grip' on the pencil would be better suited. I'm using a 'pen grip' because I'm drawing on quite a small scale. In a way, it is good that you are not satisfied it means you have room to improve, and you see that your skills need more practice. You may want to change a pose and draw a hand again and again, each time having a meaningful task you want to achieve.ĭon't be discouraged if your result is not up to the standard you envisioned. You can even use your own hand as a model and spend at least few hours to study it thoroughly. If you haven't done as many sketches, here's what you should begin with: Draw a hand from life. What you see here is the accumulation of knowledge and experience of probably hundreds of hands I've drawn before. Keep in mind that all joints of the fingers are spherical, and apply strokes along their contours. Instead of outlining small details, you may build big volumes first, making sure the relative proportions of fingers and palm is in place and progressing from big areas to smaller details.

If you are not as confident in your skills, you can employ a different approach. I already have a mental picture of the finished drawing and simply expose it on paper. Because of experience, I can draw finger by finger, judging sizes and dimensions by eye. What you see in this demonstration is a somewhat advanced way of drawing a hand. The middle and the index fingers are not spread too far apart therefore, we can draw the axes of the joints parallel to each other for both fingers. We do not render any values for the sake of doing so, but to reveal the hand's volume. Tonal values help to accentuate the form. The same approach is used for the middle finger-we concentrate the viewer's attention on the joints. Between two fingers, we can see a short outline of the palm. This outline also curves inward following the cylindrical shape of the phalange. Because the phalange can be approximated as a cylinder, we draw lines along its contours. There are two edges of the joint-one belongs to the first phalange and the other to the second. It is good to mark the direction of the axes of the index finger.

It consists of several lines, each describing a particular volume with gaps between. You can notice that finger's outline is not one continuous line with the same boldness.

The outline of the second phalange spans to the next joint. Every outline that curves into the body pulls along darker tones, which we can mark in drawing. The plane of the joint is turned away from the light, and we can render some tonal values to show this. It points to the next joint between the first and second phalanges of the index finger. Next to the joint, there is the volume of the middle part of the phalange. The following line marks the volume of the muscle that moves the thumb. This outline describes the round joint between the metacarpal bone and the phalange. Let's apply what we have learned previously. This sketch is very approximate, and all dimensions and proportions will be fine-tuned as we go forward. With very light pencil marks, we do an initial gesture sketch to lay down the main outlines of the hand.

Hand giving middle finger drawing