Q&A for How to Draw Anime Hands

Hands are difficult because they’re so complex. You have to keep track of the positions and proportions of the palm, all the fingers, and joints of each finger. Plus, hands can be posed in an almost limitless number of ways! Practice drawing hands by looking at photos or your own hands in lots of different positions.

Think of the hand like a mitten. Try drawing the mitten hand in different positions—open, closed, holding things, and so on. Once you’ve sketched in the basic shape, you can fill in details, like the individual fingers and joints.

You can make the hands look creepy by exaggerating some of their natural features. For example, make the fingers unusually long, and give them prominent, knobby knuckles and joints. Draw pronounced veins and tendons that look like they’re bulging out. You can also make the fingernails long, ragged, and dirty looking.

For an entirely grey drawing, you should make it darkest around the joints, if they're bent, and depending on the light source, the curves of the hand should be shaded in too. A gradient also helps. In colors it's really the same thing, but remember that a color in the shadows looks different than if it were well lit. For example, orange gets closer to brown in dimmer light and red also shifts toward that color.

Draw a circle for the palm, then adding little triangles for fingers. Refine as you like.

Use cylinders and spheres. Three cylinders and two spheres per finger, two cylinders and one sphere for the thumb. The spheres are the parts where your fingers bend, kind of the hinges really. Using this technique, use your hands as reference to determine the length of the individual segments. Remember to do these steps in light pencil markings so that you can erase as needed. After you have a suitable looking hand, trace the outside lines of the fingers so that they look like fingers. Erase the lines inside the fingers.

Freehand is an option, but if you're not already experienced with that, you'll find it quite challenging.

Split the palm into sections/different shapes to make up the shape of the palm.

Just draw the individual components in the position you want. It might take some practice to do it well, but keep at it.

How to Draw a Hand shows how to draw hands in a number of positions, including the peace sign.

It's best to look at your own or someone else's hand, even though it's not anime it goes by the same basic rules and the joints are in the same place.

Follow the steps, but draw the hand at an angle. For the joints, do the pose you want in real life (with your hand), then copy the joints onto the paper.

Use the 3D shapes. It's also a very good idea to check out the hand holding a pole/stick. It resembles a gun, or at least the approach you want.

Try taking a picture of your hands clenched together an do your best to copy that onto your picture.

It should look like a rectangle. Then, depending on the way it's facing, you'll either have the pinky facing the viewer or the thumb. If it's the thumb, then you should start the thumb about 1/3 of the way up the box from the wrist. If it's the pinky then it starts at the end of the pinky or close to it.

Make only a small fraction of the thumb visible, since it is behind the hip. Draw the fingers separated by about a centimeter, and now you've got a hand on a hip!

Depending on our character, but females tend to have longer nails and thinner fingers. Men tend to have shorter nails and thicker fingers, but it all depends on the character. Adults have larger hands than children usually, and depending on the age of the child, children tend to have shorter, stubbier fingers than adults.

Simply copy the first method, but draw it at a different angle (pointing upwards or slightly to one side). Then draw a face behind it.

Yes! The length of the fingers is important when it comes to making the hand look realistic. Keep this in mind and check the lengths of the fingers in all of the positions, making adjustments as necessary.

First, draw the upper arms using an elongated oval. Next, position the lower arms. One will be on top of the other, so be aware of that. After that, make a box on either side that serves as the hands. Next, draw the thumb joint, but make sure it is on the correct side of the hand. If you are unsure of where the thumb goes, look in a mirror. The fingers will most likely curl over the arm, so simply draw four ridges in place of joints.

Make sure your hand matches up with your point-of-view. Don't shy away from making your hands bigger, as hand sizes vary for everyone. If they look too short, try elongating the fingers or widening the palm.

Look up pictures of people holding hands and draw from them.

I would say do a basic flattened hand shape, then add strands of hair covering parts of the hand in certain places. The deeper the hand, the more the hair covers it.

Look at a picture that shows hands in that position to see how they naturally lay. You'll most likely need to sketch a rounded rectangle for the shape of the palm and then extend the fingers out from there, depending on if the person is making a fist or if their hands are relaxed.

Absolutely! It may take some practice to get the scale completely right, but it's doable. Start by sketching the hand on its own so that you get that skill down. Then, draw your anime character and add the hands in last. Take care to step back from time to time to see if the length of the hands looks natural compared to the size of the body.

Great question! This is kind of like drawing a hand holding an object, except you'll probably see less of a fist. Practice drawing the outline of a hand from the side, kind of like if it were holding an apple or something similar. From there, you can work on getting the shape of the hand down and then sketching the face.

Make the hands bigger and the rest of the body smaller. That will make it appear like the character is reaching forward. Draw the hands first to get their size down, and from there draw the body in the background.

You may just need to leave them in place and then work them in with shading later, or you may be able to erase the smudges away completely.

Practice drawing a closed fist to get that shape down. From there, practice drawing a fist but with the pointer finger and middle finger extended to make the peace sign. The ring finger and pinky finger should stay down in the "fist" position.

It doesn't have to be perfect! Just draw the about shape and that will be fine since you ae going to erase it later.