How hard is it to draw one thumb and four fingers? Answer: Very.
The human figure is one of the most challenging subjects for an artist to draw. After all, we're very familiar with how a human body looks: our eyes easily pick up if an arm looks too long here, or a leg seems too short there. But perhaps one of the most tricky parts of human body to illustrate are the hands.
Thanks to their bone structure and flexibility, there's a lot to consider – and get wrong – when drawing hands. Not only that, but hands communicate a lot of character; plus they have to stay in proportion with the rest of the body. It's no wonder so many illustrators dread drawing them.
Comic artist and teacher PJ Holden has summed up the frustration of drawing hands with a witty comic that he shared on Twitter – which you can read below.
Holden has tapped into a feeling a lot of artists can relate to with his witty comic. After taking a first pass at drawing a hand, his comic character tries to refine it and achieve perfection, only to be left with something that looks worse than what he started with. It's enough to make you snap your pencil in half.
So what can you do if, like Holt, you're a frustrated artist who wants to improve your hand drawing skills? Well, you could take a look at our how to draw hands guide by artist Brynn Metheney for starters.
The secret to hand illustration is breaking them down into components
In this brilliant seven-step tutorial, Metheney walks through the anatomy of a hand and shows you how to build it up in 3D. By the time you've finished, you'll have a greater understanding of how hands work and how the bones, tendons and muscles all move together.
Dom Carter is a freelance writer who specialises in art and design. Formerly a staff writer for Creative Bloq, his work has also appeared on Creative Boom and in the pages of ImagineFX, Computer Arts, 3D World, and .net. He has been a D&AD New Blood judge, and has a particular interest in picture books.
