Hands. I hate hands.

[Ashenge]

Easily the hardest thing on a human for me to draw. Well... Actually, maybe it's feet. But I don't NEED to draw those as often. Now I am so sure there's a hundred different places I could go to find all the references I need. But I can't find anything on my own. What I've come to realize is that I can google these things for hours on end and come up with nothing. But one post on ConceptArt will leave me with an inexhaustible supply of awesome.

So how about it? I need fairly diverse and dynamic poses. Hands that are holding things, hands that are foreshortening, hands that pointing at folk. I absolutely cannot rely on my left hand to hold the exact same pose for the amount of time that I need to draw it.

[JJacks]

I ask people to pose their hands for me or I take photos of my own.

[AChipps]

I have used a mirror a lot, but it wasn't use to draw every detail, because it helps to learn the structure, since there are a lot of joints. Imagine the hand like a spider, and make it interesting, and something you will remember to help you with the joints, and then study the joint lenghts of each finger, and look at other peoples fingers. But like the body you can take one joint at a time, and making corrections.

[Viridis]

This is probably not what people would recommend, but... I actually found looking at comics/manga to be hugely helpful. In manga or the more detailed comics (not something like BONE with cartoon rules) you've already got an artist who has stylized hands in almost every position. This was really helpful in learning to simplify them a bit in my own drawings.

I still will sit and look at my own hand for reference if I need to, or try to get a picture of someone sitting/holding something in the position I need, but I do remember thinking of hands as a huge hurdle, and finding the sort of "answer" I needed in manga.

...and I had to draw like 50 hand studies a week in art school for the first year. I'm sure that helped too. >_>;

[Ashenge]

I've tried to reference from Bleach a couple times. But what ends up happening is that I'm able to breeze through it so fast that I can't learn. It's different from drawing real ones, because with the real thing you're re-interpreting contours and cast light into black lines. With manga, that's what they come as. Hard to learn.

[Hexokinase]

Brush up on your Bridgman (I personally like Constructive Anatomy).
Learn the structure and proportions. When you have the basics down, then use your hand and a mirror whenever you come across a difficult pose.

[Ilaekae]

Hands don't bother me. I really REALLY hate fuckin' feet. I think they're the ugliest part of the human body, bar none.

[Leonor]

Start with this tutorial. It explains what to notice in the hands. Draw the schemes and then draw your own hands looking for the characteristics she is explaining. Find more tutorials and books like this, that offer you good explanations of what a hand is, what to notice about its structure and anatomy and how to see it in 3D.

If you try to draw a hand from life without this knowledge it won't look right. Notice the hand in this drawing, I drew it from life, using my own as reference. Yet, it's the most obviously mistaken thing there. Only after I read the tutorial I linked I noticed what I did wrong and why. (Unfortunately I'm yet to correct.)

[Linguini]

Search for whatever reference pictures you desire here...

I searched "hand" and look at all the poses available to draw. I searched "hands" and got even more poses.

The best thing, really, would be to look at your own hands and feet and draw them and take pictures of them in positions you can't hold for very long.

[Dave_]

Unlike feet, you don't need 2 skills to draw hands.


*1st: Take of your shoes
2nd: Take of your socks

[J Wilson]

But I can't find anything on my own.

None of your friends and family have hands? Grab a camera (even a disposable one if you need to) and shoot some photos. 15 minutes with a camera and a friend or two will give you a lot of photos to work from, and you'll always get the angles, poses, and lighting you are looking for.

[Sekino]

The good part is that once you get past the initial hardship, hands are really fun to draw: They're so articulated and expressive, they have a life of their own. If needed, I use my own hand as reference (especially for grasping poses) or I harras... I mean ask my better half to pose, then adjust the hand according to gender (men's hands are more rectangular with long ring fingers and women's are more triangular with long index fingers).

Hands don't bother me. I really REALLY hate fuckin' feet. I think they're the ugliest part of the human body, bar none.

I felt the exact same way for years. Then Bouguereau made me appreciate feet. There was this painting of a little shepherd girl with her foot sticking out from under her dress. The way the pale, wrinkled, pillowy ball of the foot, slightly blackened from dirt was so damn perfect, I thought it was the most impressive part of the painting. Then I realized they were nearly as expressive as hands (yet I still dislike the sight of painted toenails ).

[Nateman742]

If you can't hold your hand long enough to draw it in detail, do lots of little studies. It'll be just like the rush of life-drawing a sitting stranger. Is it going to move? Will it notice you and scurry away? Will it call the police? Who knows?

The only other tools you need are a cheap poseable desklamp and maybe some googly eyes if you want to spice things up.

[Choob]

Just start off with simple structure, don't get into detail.

That can come later.

One step at a time.

[VulgarDragon]

Get a sign language book and copy every picture until your eyes fall out. If you don't want to, then just draw people with hands in their pockets, behind their backs, etc...or put hooks on them.

Hands don't bother me. I really REALLY hate fuckin' feet. I think they're the ugliest part of the human body, bar none.

Not into feet fetish, I gather?