Why are hands so dang hard?
Few things have the potential of making an artist quake with anxiety quite like drawing hands. Hands, as essential as they are to the craft of drawing original characters, have proven challenging to draw for many of us. Hands are an anatomical feature that can be hard to hide when you lack anatomical knowledge, and you need that knowledge to draw appropriate hands.
One reason that hands are so tricky to draw is that they have incredible mechanical complexity in their function, which must come across in an illustration. Fingers, for example, all bend in similar spots but have differing lengths. The length of each finger can also vary in the size of the space between the joints. Now throw in the thumb and where it rests. Not only does it differ in visible joints, but you need to contend with the thumb radiating from the hand at a unique angle. The thumb can swivel and fold to change the shape of the palm on which it extends.
You do not need to know every bone in the hand to draw them successfully, though it wouldn't hurt. What you need to know are the essentials. There is no end to the number of websites that can lay out the structure of a hand and give you a good, working knowledge of the structure, enough to get how a hand can be drawn.
Stepping away from the mechanics of the hand, you also need to account for proportions. Most of us know how hands should look as we see them daily, on people we interact with, or at the ends of our wrists. We will notice if fingers appear too long or thick. Swapping the lengths of the index and middle fingers, for example, can happen when drawing hands, which looks odd. That doesn't mean your proportions need to be exact, but some fingers are going to need to be smaller than others for them to feel right in a character design.
Even stylized and cartoony hands require anatomical knowledge. Cartooning is based on exaggeration, but to exaggerate a form, you need to understand what that form is. Even if you balloon out each finger to create a soft, round, cartoony hand, the proportions, and structures still affect how the audience interprets them. Realistic hands-on cartoony characters can come off as offputting. Like Hubert will demonstrate in the example below.
Resources and References
There is no limit to the number of tutorials and guides out there for drawing hands, as they are among the most studied parts of anatomy for artists of all skill levels. Any Google search will provide examples of how to draw hands of a certain style. However, sometimes you just need references and images of hands in various positions. Thankfully, there are plenty of those as well. Specifically, we’ll get to how to draw a cartoon hand later in the article. For now, though, consider the following reference sources.
First off, your best resource is your smartphone and a friend. Simply taking photos of hands at the exact angles and poses you need is a great way to establish a library of references. You’d never be out of luck searching for a reference for certain finger positions or angles, because you can just create your own.
Of course, if you want to turn to the internet, typing “hand reference images” into a search engine will provide millions of pictures of hands for your inspiration. That can include stock photo websites, reference sites, or Pinterest lists. You can even hone your search to reference images of a certain style. You could easily Google “anime hand reference” and “cartoon drawing of a hand” and find useful references, but the more specific you get, the fewer quality results you will get in the long run.
If you’re looking to hone in on anime hand references, you can always turn to anime screencap galleries and reference those. The same applies to cartoon hands.
One great resource for hand references, especially if you want to learn to draw them quickly, is Line of Action’s hands & feet tool. This site allows you to generate life-drawing style sessions where you are given images of hands at set intervals, teaching you how to draw quickly and efficiently. You can set intervals from anywhere from 30 seconds to 10 minutes.
Another great source for hand references is Posemaniacs, which I covered in another article. Posemaniacs has a hand reference model, which you can rotate as you see fit. If you want to get a sense of the structure of the hand at different angles, then Posemaniacs is a great resource.
The Box Method
Here, though, let’s turn to how to draw cartoon hands using my method, which I call “the box method.” This is a breakdown of how I understand hand anatomy to draw simple cartoon hands. The core of this method is to be able to draw simple, 3D boxes. If you can eyeball a simple 3D box you can use my method of cartoon hand drawing.
My first step is to draw the shape of the palm, which I view as a squared, thin box. Draw the box at the angle you wish the hand to be. If you draw the box flat then the hand will be positioned flat. If you tilt the box the hand will be tilted at that angle. It seems easy enough, right? I’ll be using a reference from Posemaniacs for this one.
The next step, probably the trickiest, is figuring out where you want the fingers positioned. The finger positions depend on the type of action you are having the hand do, and you have to make sure you position those lines on the appropriate sides for what you are going for. Once you pick a side for the four fingers, draw them, but remember that the “middle finger” is the longer one, while the pinky is dramatically shorter.
As for the thumb, I draw my guiding line for it at the corner of the box. Remember that the bottom-most segment is connected to the palm. It might be best thought of as a triangle. The bottom-most segment is built into the flesh of the palm.
With your fingers positioned, they should be fleshed out and given volume. That is where new, smaller cubes come in. Don’t rush this, work finger by finger and add the three proportionally sized cubes that make up the volume of each digit. These do not need to be perfect cubes, either, just enough to give yourself an idea about the volume of each digit. It might even be easier to envision them as shapes like cylinders.
Do the same with the thumb, just remember that while the fingers have three distinct boxes, you’ll only draw two for the thumb. The base is going to fold into the palm.
With the hand now given volume, you can clean up the image. Add the details that feel appropriate to the style of the cartoon drawing of a hand that you are looking for. Many anime hand references may point you toward more delicate features, while cartoony hands will appear rounder. They often have fewer digits too. When I draw, I usually aim for more squared-off digits, but maybe that is just me being a Jack Kirby fan.
Show off those hands at CharacterHub
With a little practice, you can master how to draw cartoon hands easily. Like anything worth doing, it requires patience and practice. Drawing good-looking cartoon hands is possible for anyone.
But, what to do with all those practice hands? Consider including them on social posts on CharacterHub as you develop your original characters and their profiles. You can share your hand cartooning and gain valuable feedback and insight from community members. You never know if someone there may have a tip that helps you figure out a tricky spot when drawing hands.
Once you master those hands, don’t forget to include those details on your character reference sheets!
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David Davis
David Davis is a cartoonist with around twenty years of experience in comics, including independent work and established IPs such as SpongeBob Squarepants. He also works as a college composition instructor and records weekly podcasts. Find out more about him at his website!
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