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Description

With all the hands I have been drawing I've been trying to come up with a simple method that allows me to position the hand and fingers. This is frustrating.

Had a bit of an epiphany last night as I was lying awake at night worrying about everything:

1) Draw the wrist as a cylinder (not a sphere!). Then put a circle that is slightly wider than the wrist. In a plan view, the circle is "palm" so sits just above the top of the cylinder. Split the circle in half so the line is also splitting the cylinder 9which will be important when you pivot the hand. I think).

2) On the thumb side, draw out the pointy finger part of the palm and connect that to the top of the wrist cylinder. The draw an arc from the side of pinky finger to the middle of the wrist . Lastly split the two halves of the circle and wrist so you have a "fan" of four equal parts.

3) This is where I had the epiphany. The key is to draw the first lines of the fingers where the lines are closest to the viewers. In this case it's the palm. The base of the lines are the section lines from #1 and #2.

4) Finish off the fingers. It helps to draw a guide line that splits the angles of the knuckles to place the opposite side of the knuckle. In this case the final "back" line of the pointer finger extends to the base of the wrist to expand the 2-D circle to something approximating a hand.

5) The thumb then is easy to place. The base joint is to the side and slightly above the cylinder. Then angle the middle thumb joint as needed.

6) Finish off the thumb.

7) Clean up the guide lines and "soften" angles to make things look organic. The ends of the wrist cylinder are now the wring joint "nubs".

I'm still working and refining this process and will do a lot more this weekend, including seeing of this works when you draw a hand palm-down. So try this out at your own risk!

Description

With all the hands I have been drawing I've been trying to come up with a simple method that allows me to position the hand and fingers. This is frustrating.

Had a bit of an epiphany last night as I was lying awake at night worrying about everything:

1) Draw the wrist as a cylinder (not a sphere!). Then put a circle that is slightly wider than the wrist. In a plan view, the circle is "palm" so sits just above the top of the cylinder. Split the circle in half so the line is also splitting the cylinder 9which will be important when you pivot the hand. I think).

2) On the thumb side, draw out the pointy finger part of the palm and connect that to the top of the wrist cylinder. The draw an arc from the side of pinky finger to the middle of the wrist . Lastly split the two halves of the circle and wrist so you have a "fan" of four equal parts.

3) This is where I had the epiphany. The key is to draw the first lines of the fingers where the lines are closest to the viewers. In this case it's the palm. The base of the lines are the section lines from #1 and #2.

4) Finish off the fingers. It helps to draw a guide line that splits the angles of the knuckles to place the opposite side of the knuckle. In this case the final "back" line of the pointer finger extends to the base of the wrist to expand the 2-D circle to something approximating a hand.

5) The thumb then is easy to place. The base joint is to the side and slightly above the cylinder. Then angle the middle thumb joint as needed.

6) Finish off the thumb.

7) Clean up the guide lines and "soften" angles to make things look organic. The ends of the wrist cylinder are now the wring joint "nubs".

I'm still working and refining this process and will do a lot more this weekend, including seeing of this works when you draw a hand palm-down. So try this out at your own risk!