Draw Stylized Hands and Hand Poses in Procreate: Tips & Tricks for Hands Illustration

1. Introduction: Hello and welcome to another class. In this class, we are focusing on drawing stylized hands. And we will dive into the art of simplifying and using basic shapes if you want to feel more comfortable and to boost your confidence in drawing hands, either for your personal projects or client work. This class is for you. Hi, I'm Eva, and I'm full time illustrator. Drawing hands helps you to create more engaging characters. And that also helped me to work on many projects big and small. So I want to help you to do the same during this class. And even if you are a beginner and you to procreate, I will take you step by step through the process. During this class, we'll start off with looking at references and tips and tricks on what to focus on when drawing hands. Drawing hands can be tricky because of the amount of bones and muscles. So in this class, I want to help you to simplify the shapes and break the process down into more manageable steps. So you can soon be creating hand drawings that make you proud. I hope when you watch this video and follow this project illustration, you will feel super happy about what you created and you will feel like, oh, I can't wait to share my illustration with others. And when you are sharing it on Instagram, please make sure that you take me in the image not only in the description, because that way I can see your illustration and maybe you'll see it in one of the next videos. So if you don't know yet, you can find even more drawing tutorials and classes. There are procreate and other tutorials. And I have more than 30 classes. There, there is a variety from beginner level to more advanced levels and you can also find different topics. So without further ado, let's start and see you in the class. 2. Flat vs 3D Shapes: All right, we will start with simple shapes. Now with the brush. I will be sketching with brush number 21, which has a little bit of texture, but you can choose any brush that you like. For this drawing exercise, I will be sketching with warm brown color, but again, you can choose any color that you like. When it comes to palm, I usually like to think about the first shape, which is the palm from the top or from the bottom. I imagine this simple shape. As you can see, it's very loose, so we can even zoom out. You can always imagine a grid on this simple shape. Then if you want to twist this shape in space, you would still imagine that the grid is following the shape of the palm has this three dimensional shape. It's not just like flat shape like this, but you can start thinking about palm in these terms. This usually helps me to imagine these shapes much better. I can reduce the opacity of this first one even more. We have a nicer looking sketch of the sketches don't have to be perfect, that's why the warm up exercises help. All right, first thinking about this flat shape, then what I do next is think about this flat shape in space. Basically, we still have this rectangle. Once again here I need to make sure that the sides are aligned. Then I can create a box in a three D space. This can represent the palm. You can imagine the grid on top of this box as well. Then it should be easier to move this box in different angles. I can imagine this as a base for the palm. And as you can see, you can do many boxes like this as an exercise just to practice creating the type of shapes to imagine this kind of box as a palm in three D space. All right, I sketch a couple more of these boxes in very rough line art. It's not perfect. But basically when you imagine starting from very flat shape, then you would imagine how this shape can bend and twist in space. For example, if you bend it like upside down, you can have shadows on the edge. You can imagine that your palm is bending. And then you might have a shadow here and here. And this is in light. Of course, this is very simplified then If you have the three dimensional shape, you can always imagine the side of the palm and the top of the palm, you would have a darker side on one side and light on the top. If the light comes from the left side, then if you twist and turn this type of shape, you would have always the shade or shadow on this side and light coming from here in this case. All right, now let's move on to the next part. It would be the best if you practice more with these shapes, you get more comfortable imagining shapes in three space. 3. Sharp Angles vs Curves: Now let's start looking at real life references of hands. Well, this one is mine, as you might have guessed. Now let me share a next step. What helps me when drawing hands? First of all, as I mentioned in the previous lesson, is practicing drawing the basic boxes. I have more of these images here, so I can sketch this box on top of the hand. Also on this one we have the top side and bottom side. The top side is called dorsal side and the bottom side of the hand is called Palmer side. Then let me show you what helps me when sketching hands. Another tip. It's this angle with the thumb. Always try to pay attention where is this angle when looking at different references of hands. Because on the left side, on the left side, when we are looking from the top, we have a bone here. On this side there is muscle. This one is a little bit more round than this one. The same when you look from the other side, obviously you have a bone here and the muscle here. Let's look at these other references. This angle is a little bit less sharp than on this side. When you look here, the angle is here. It's this sharp angle. When you are looking at the hand, the next thing is what I'm looking at, especially when you have the top part, the dorsal side. Then when you have the bottom side, as I mentioned, you have a bone here. But there is the muscle here. There is this iconic muscle where we attach the thumb. We can disregard this one for now, focus only on this big muscle, which is here on the bottom side of the palm, which usually helps you to define the hand when drawing. Just to recap, when looking at the hand, first try to imagine the box. How the palm is positioned? Is the box from the side, or you see it just from the top? As a flat shape. Usually we see the hands from the side or many different angles. But the angle of the bone, which is here, always helps me to define the placement and the shape when drawing the hand. The angle, if it is from the bottom side is this muscle. All right, now let's move to the next part. 4. Simplifying the Silhouette: Now to continue with the same references, let me mention another tip which helps me to draw hands. That is, imagining the hand as a mitten. Maybe you already heard about this approach, but it's basically imagining the mittens you wear in the winter where you group all the fingers together and then you just have this whole thing becomes one silhouette and one shape. How can you approach that? I will use the angle of the thumb. Then here I can round of the box that we used. Then for the top part, I would just use this type of shape of the part with the thumb. You have the mitten. If you draw the shape from the bottom, the muscle as we talked about, because that helps me to define the hand is in a different view that we are looking at it from the bottom. Then I can add the thumb again with the angle. Then I can add the top part of the mitten from the bottom. I can also draw the connection where the fingers start. I can imagine if the hand is from the Palmer side, as I mentioned, or from the dorsal side from the top. This is another thing which really helps me when drawing the hand in different angles. We can practice this approach more in upcoming lessons as well. Now to continue with the mitten exercise, always imagine where is the muscle from the bottom of the palm, as we mentioned before. Then where is the angle of the bone that we also mentioned? Then you can draw the thumb as a mitten. Then for now, you can draw the part with the fingers just as a mitten. And then you have it. If you just focus on the mitten shape here, you would have the palm with the muscle and the rest of the mitten shape, If we do the same thing over again, we have the hands, then we have the top of the palm. Here we have the angle, then we have the thumb there. You have your mitten. Now here we don't see the bottom side of the muscle, but there is another muscle here. If you push your finger towards, the hand will create more volume. They use this in Tarzan Animation Theory. If you watch the animation or look at some of the sketches, they utilize drawing this muscle lot in the animations because it creates this realism to the hand. Now if we create another mitten here, first I will create the rounded box as we looked at before. Then I will add the angle of the bone here. I can just at the top for this part, I can just draw the mitten in this way, because we will have the fingers splitting the mitten with the light and darker part. Then if you imagine this type of mitten, you can again draw the top part flat because we have the bones there. The bottom part will be more rounded, but still we can emphasize the bone here. Then the finger and just top of the fingers on the top fingers, right? You can actually simplify this whole top part to be more flat when we are talking about simplification, all right? Always pay attention which direction is the thumb and the bone of the thumb if we see this little bit more rounded or you see more of this angle. But I like to emphasize the angle of the bone because it makes the drawings quite interesting. You can decide to make it a little bit more rounded, as I already mentioned, or a little bit more angular. Always pay attention where is the soft part of the hand, which means the muscle, and where there is the bone of the hand. Because here obviously there is bone and here we can create the curve because we have more soft part and the muscle there. All right, now let's move to the next part. 5. Wrist and Palm Proportions: All right. Before moving on to focus on fingers and the palm in different angles, let me show you what I also like to pay attention and what you should notice also on your references when drawing. That is the distance or the amount of volume when you consider the wrist and the palm placement on top of the wrist, which means on this side there is the angle here, which is smaller. And on this side, the angle is quite big. What I want you to notice is the distance from the wrist in whatever angle you are looking at the hand. Always try to pay attention to this angle or the width of this part versus the width on the other side where the thumb is, if I sketch it on top. All right. Basically what I want you to notice and pay attention to is the placement of the palm compared to the wrist wide. Or how big is the side where the thumb compared to the side where you are drawing the hand from the wrist to the pinky? So this angle will be usually smaller than this one. All right, now let's move on to the next part. 6. Palm, Joints and Fingers: Now let's look at the placement of the fingers and the joints. If you first look at the palm from the dorsal side, you will see that the knuckles, the joints are somewhere here. The placement of the joints, it's following this type of curve. Then the top of the finger, okay, this is not a knuckle obviously, but you will see the joints are here. The top of the finger has different placement. You will see that the top three fingers and the middle finger is the tallest. And then there is a bigger jump to pinky. When you're drawing the ten shape, you can always create more, this angular line going towards the pinky. Now if we look from the other side, you will see the lines splitting the hand from the Palmer side little bit differently. Because if you notice the parts of the fingers, they are split more evenly, approximately the same. Let me sketch this again in different colors so you can see it better. The parts from the bottom are a little bit more even compared to the other side where you see that the bottom part or the first part of the finger, it's much longer and then it's shorter and shorter. Also try to notice that the palm is longer from the bottom side. I can edit this, We can see better compare to the dorsal side where it's a little bit shorter. That's when you where the fingers start. On the top side, it's a little bit lower compared to the Palmer side. That's why when we bend the hand where you have all the knuckles, you have the lines here, right? Always notice how you can create these lines and placement of the knuckles when you are sketching the palm. You can create the man like this and the same here on this side. So pay attention where the joins are and how you can connect them. When drawing the hand, you can always imagine these lines going closer and closer together. When drawing the fingers, of course you want to follow this one to the top here. Pay attention where the fingers are starting. And if you want to draw the lines, then you can split the fingers more or less evenly, All right? Just to recap, evenly split the fingers from the Palmer side. The palm is a little bit longer from the dorsal side, from the top. The palm is a little bit shorter when you look at it, depending from the jangle. Then creating these curves when connecting the joints on the hand helps When you are drawing the met, you can create curve part and then going down the same here and sharper down then the angle. Now before we move on to the next part, just to reiterate what we just talked about, the Palmer side versus the dorsal side. When you look at the hand from the side and you would imagine the box, we would have our mitten. Basically this line is not the same, right, Based on what we just talked about. If you would need to actually recreate the box, you would need to create a line something like this. Because this part is longer and this part is shorter. Think about that. When you're placing the knuckles or the placement of the shadows and like bumps if you want to add them when drawing had this part is longer and this part is shorter when simplifying the hands. All right, now let's move to the next part. 7. Drawing Fingers: Now let me mention another tip. What I use when thinking about drawing fingers. That's a cylinder technique. I always imagine these type of tubes. Because if you think about it, the fingers are like these cylinders. If I imagine this type of shape, it's easier for me to think how the curves would be in different perspectives. Basically, you can take any shape which will help you to imagine this type of like a cylinder tube. And you can move it around if you want to use it as a reference. You can use any shape that you find at home if you want to practice these type of cylinder shapes when drawing fingers. Because I can twist it and turn it in different ways. And that can help me to imagine different perspectives. And also foreshortening in more difficult angles depending how curved is, this kind of shape. You can also imagine drawing a fingernail on top of this curved surface. Basically, the fingernail would be following the shape, maybe, then the fingernail is something like this. It's hard to imagine that this is a finger. But thinking about these three D shapes, it helps when imagining different things on top of these shapes. Like on top of the surface, for example, the fingernail, the cylinder technique, helps me to imagine the fingers in different perspectives. Okay, now let's look at some hand references. First of all, when drawing fingers, of course we have the palm as we practiced in previous lessons. And then the fingers are spread wider than the palm. If you are drawing them in this way, then the same, you can imagine this curve and then connect them to the wrist. Let's create lines for each finger. Imagine this, but of course, when we are drawing different hands, we see an overlap on the fingers. What helps me to establish the shape is to focus on which fingers are on the top. Then I can focus on the other fingers which are overlapping each other. This one is on the top. Then all of these other ones are grouped together. Then we have the top of the palm with this bone and the angle and the breast. When we are creating stylized wrist, you can make this part more narrow. What also helps me in this is establishing the fingernail. Basically, the placement of the fingernail helps to show which direction the finger is turned, Depending how much fingernail we can see on the finger or we don't see, helps you to create the shape of the finger and show in which angle the finger is turned. Let's look at another reference. The same goes for this one. First, I will focus on the thumb. You can create the ovals to help you create the shapes. Then you can draw a little bit of that muscle which connects the palm, I mean the thumb to the palm. Then here on top of the finger where there is bone, you can draw straight line, then curved lines to create the rest of the finger, the bottom part. As we looked at the cylinder, you can imagine that the finger volume is the same, like the cylinder here. I can simplify with straight lines on top and create the curve part on the bottom. Again, try to imagine the cylinder. This part we can either simplify with little bump and going down that you can start to notice the cylinders on the hand and how you would shade it. You would follow these lines when shading the palm. But of course, we are not creating realistic palms, but we will be simplifying the silhouette and the shapes here. I'm already thinking, what can I group and simplify when drawing this hand? We can practice a little bit more on this one. Again, I forgot to mention on this one that we see the fingernail here. I would draw the fingernail on this one. We see it only on this part a little bit and we don't see it much on the other fingers. All right, on this one, I can create straight line here, another straight line here, curve the finger, then go down here, create the cylinders, which can help me to imagine how to shade this. Then the thumb, you can round off, this line is a little bit curved here, I can exaggerate the bone as we talked about before. You can create this subtle curve here, then add most of the other fingers. As you can see, we can imagine the cylinders for all the other parts as well. And then we can simplify the top part just with a straight line. Think about the cylinders, how it can help you when creating the palm. Then how you place the fingers, because that will help you to show how the palm is turned and how the fingers are turned in perspective. Okay, now let's move on to the next part. 8. Gesture and the Silhouette: Looking at different references, always help me to draw hands and imagine the hand poses for illustrations that I want. But sometimes, either when you take a picture of your own hand or you find the reference, the silhouette can be hard to read. Maybe it's not exactly what you want for your illustration. How can you simplify this type of silhouette? My first thought would be these fingers probably can be grouped together. Then the bottom finger, the forefinger can be grouped together. This type of hand or pose for the hand is often used in animation as well. Where you have the pinky out a little bit more, maybe the thumb is out as well. Try to think about how you can simplify the silhouette. Here. I try to take another image or another photo where I group these two fingers together. Then the pinky is sticking out a little bit more just to create some interest. As you can see, the fingernails are in a little bit different angles for this one, and this one is on the side. Then we add the angle for the thumb, and here we have the muscle. Of course, there is that pencil. Think about how you can group the fingers, the silhouette becomes more interesting. What I usually like to do is to group at least two fingers or three fingers, and maybe the pinky is separate in the silhouette here, I try to take another photo where I actually group the fingers. This was not natural pose for my hand first, but I try to group it, as I mentioned, in a way how I like to draw it. Basically, the thumb is separate here, we have the muscle here, you put the bone. These fingers are grouped together and the pinky is separate. I like to create hand poses like this because for my illustrations, I like how elegant they look. Of course, it depends on what type of illustrations you want to create. But try to think about the silhouette of the hand, if it is readable, and how you can group the fingers. The same goes for this one here. The fingers are more angled, but I can group the fingers in this way. I have the curve, then I can add another curve here. And the wrist, just to recap, try to think about the silhouette of the hand and how you can create this nice overlap and group the fingers. Now let me mention another thing which I found important when drawing hands, and that is a gesture. Gesture is one of the most important things when drawing hands because we want to communicate with our illustrations. Hands and their expressiveness can help us to do that. We talked about the simplification. Now let's try to simplify this gesture. We will have this ten shape and the fingers. Then you have the thumb, the curve, and the wrist. What is also important when you are simplifying, try to decide on what is the important information when simplifying the edges of the fingers. Because maybe on this part, when I will redefine the illustration, I still want to keep the knuckles right. Even though I simplify the silhouette and group the fingers together, I'm still keeping some of the bumps and the fingers are rounded at the ends. But the important part of the gesture is one of the fingers is out and the other fingers are grouped together. Also with this type of gesture, try to avoid creating just one round block. Because as you can see, some of these fingers are higher up and others are lower. Even though when you start and first try to notice the shape when simplifying, of course, use the simplified shapes, but then when you redefine the drawing, try to add some of these bumps, still, keep the silhouette simplified if you want to have that look. Of course we are not creating hyper realistic look, but try to think how to simplify or how to balance the simplification. And little bit of interest in the silhouette on this one. What I want to show you is I also pay attention to the wrist. Is the wrist more like this? Maybe the hand would look even more relaxed or post. If the wrist is in a different angle, pay attention how you place the wrist. Is the wrist very much stretched, for example, like on this one? Because when you place the fingers and the wrist in this way, it creates more tension and creates definitely different gesture than a relaxed hand and arm like on this one, where the wrist has different placement. Try to pay attention to how you simplify and the silhouette that you create. But you don't oversimplify and just create only blobs. But pay attention to the silhouette and the wrist placement. All right, now let's move on to the next part. 9. Male and Female Hands: All right. Now let's briefly talk about male versus female hands, because of course, there are many different hands and palms. So this is not, uh, you know, set in stone or anything like that. It's more like generalization of some of the more common hands or what you see around you. Of course, this is not something that is always the rule, but let me just mention it. Let me move this back. Female hands or for some people the palm is more narrow. The fingers can be longer and more slim compared to maybe male hand, which sometimes tend to have much wider palm, bigger fingers, and maybe sometimes even shorter fingers. They sometimes utilize this type of look in animations where the male have the bigger or wider palm compared to females which have more narrow palm and longer fingers also sometimes happens or sometimes what you can see is the wider thumb for males, then females have more narrow tube. Of course, some females have also longer nails. This is how you can also draw it in animation or when drawing female fingers versus male fingers. Also another part, how you can differentiate is to draw wrists which are more narrow compared to male wrists which can be wider. Let me move this chunky finger here. This other chunky finger, let me make it smaller. Just to recap, some of the more stereotypical proportions for female versus male hand is the palm shape. For male, it can be wider, for female, it can be longer and more narrow. The wrist can be also more narrow versus the male wrist, also the length of the fingers. For males, you can draw them shorter and chunkier. You can use more square shapes. For females, you can use more round and soft shapes. You can see it in some of the animations, how they use the shapes of the fingers to differentiate different characters. For example, if you are drawing maybe old grandma or someone with bigger knuckles and more angular shape fingers. You can play with bringing the character into the hands for your characters when you're drawing illustrations. And the same goes for the fingers. This person has long fingernails. Or you can draw fingers with still like longer fingernails, but they don't go outside of the shape of the finger. They are not like much longer. Something like this. You can also research and look at different fingers and different fingernails for males and females, depending what you want to draw. All right, now let's move to the next part. 10. Project Illustration #1: All right, now let's catch with some references. I collected variety of references to choose from for this first exercise. Or if you do more of these exercises, which I definitely suggest is to follow the same shape or the same hand gesture and placement as I'm doing in this exercise. And then later on you can find your own references and practice different hand poses. For the first one I was thinking, we can take something like this and then we can some plants or the flower into the hand. I am sketching on a separate layer. For this part, I will take a softer brush, but you can continue with the same brush that you are using right now. I also prepare a color palette. If you want to use the same colors as I am using, I will first sketch with this warmer, darker brown or lighter brown. Then I will try to look at the hand and imagine the mitten. First of all, I am sketching the palm, trying to see the proportions. We have the muscle here, Then the thumb is somewhere above the palm. We can draw this round circle here. Don't worry, we can always move these shapes. The finger or actually this is the index fingers, just above the thumb. We can place it somewhere here. Then this finger is aligned with the top part of the muscle. It will be somewhere here and then we can move it. This other finger is somewhere here overlapping the pinky is hidden there as well. Then we have the shape where we have the top of the finger band. We can imagine the mitten here. We can add the bone angle which goes a little bit out of the palm. So let's see. These two fingers can be grouped together. The pinky can be separate. I will draw this line here. And then the second line of the bottom part of the finger here. I can see that I need to move the fingers a little bit. This is the first, the thumb needs to be smaller, maybe something like this. We create the space for these fingers here. Then the position of the wrist, don't forget that it goes from more narrow to wider. And we want to have bigger space on the right side than on the left side. Now I will reduce the opacity of this sketch and I will sketch on top. So I want to group these two fingers together and this should be aligned with the middle of the finger. Here, I'm looking at the alignment. Drawing the bone and here, imagining the cylinder shape. We will create this part a little bit S and then the muscle a little bit longer here, then we have the angle here. I will break the silhouette with the pinky. I will hide the reference for a moment. So I can simplify these shapes. I want to group these two fingers. If you remember the pink is always shorter, Then we have the top of the palm. We can connect it on this side. The forefinger looks quite short. We can always move it to make it a little bit longer, and maybe we can angle it a little bit. Then let's double check with our reference if that looks all right. I think we need more space in this part, but other than that, I think it's fine. Maybe this finger needs to be a little bit more narrow. As you can see, it's not exactly the same because I wanted to group these two fingers together. This one needs to be a little bit longer. The knuckle or the joint is a little bit lower than on this one. Then we can add nails. They're on this side. The shadow will be in the middle of the palm. Little bit on this finger, on the bottom of this one, and also on this side. All right. I will hide this one and I will add some color. I will create a new layer. I will set these to multiply, so we can draw under it. I will take the light color for this one and change the brush and color it in. Then checking if I like the silhouette, then I can add the shadow with a little bit darker tone. Let's see if this one is too dark, maybe this one is too dark. I can, yes, this one works a little bit better. I will add the shadow here under the fingers, in the middle of the palm. Following the shape of the muscle, I can create the clipping mask. I draw only within this shape. Then I will reduce the opacity and I'll just draw on the edge to blend it in a little bit. Now I will add the outline on top with a darker color. And the same, following the sketch that we created, we need to adjust the opacity back 200. And I will add the nails with the darker color as we saw in the reference on this finger. It will be just from the side. We will see also the nail on the pink a little bit. All right, we can also add a flower, let's do that on a separate layer like we looked at in the references. We can have a flower going through the hand here, the top of the flower can be this pinkish color. And we can imagine maybe a field flower. We can alphalog and then add lighter tones to the edges. And the same for the petals. And we can also add some shadow. Maybe this one is too dark and release the alpha Oc. And we can add a few petals in this lighter tone as well. All right, let's move to the next part. 11. Project Illustration #2: All right, now let's create another drawing on this one. I cleaned up the lines a little bit so they are a little bit sharper just with the eraser on the edges. Now I will draw the other hand on different layer can group these layers together. And depending how many layers you have available, you can either draw on a new canvas or you can scale this down and draw next to it. All right, now I will go take my sketching brush again, take the darker color. I will choose a different reference. I think for this one we can choose another one holding a plant, just to go with the same topic. I will draw this hand first, I will focus on overall silhouette to make it easier. And then I will add the plant. First I see this drop shape. I will try to create something like that. Then here on the side, we have the wrist attached. Obviously we need to move it, and then this will go wider. All right, Now I will try to see bigger shapes. We have this bigger shape which is in the shadow, then the palm is in the back. You don't see the whole palm here. We have the muscle from the thumb, but the fingers are folded, right? So we have the palm here and then the other fingers are folded here. All right? And then we have this one finger going somewhere here. And then the thumb is behind. Okay? So now it looks like a mess, right? Let's reduce this. But to see the proportions, it always helps me to see the silhouette and bigger shapes. Now I will try to create these angles. I have this one angle here, then the knuckles are aligned. Then we have this part of the hand that should be aligned with the muscle here. And then the wrist and the fore arm. I think here we can add a little bit of bump for that bone in the wrist. Now we can simplify this finger that we straighten it a little bit. Then I will use this line, which is here, to straighten this part. That ends where this other finger is. Okay? That will be one of the fingers. Then I can draw this half circle for that finger. Then this finger will be a little bit more angled. So we will have this gap between the fingers. Because this finger is lower, it goes further out of the silhouette, but the knuckles are aligned in this way. Then we have this curve here. We can create that. The pinky which is hiding here. All right, and then we need to add these lines. Now I see I can reduce this part here. We can at the thumb, it's behind the forefinger. Index finger. The index finger can be a little bit longer because this knuckle is a little bit higher up. And I will align it with this other one. And we need this middle split where we have the muscle from the thumb and we can add the shadow in the middle part of the hand. Then we will have this soft curve. We will do that with the shadows going a little bit higher up here in the wrist then back down. And I think that will work. I can reduce the volume here a little bit, then we can make everything a little bit smaller. We have space for the plant, so we can add the leaves here. Oh, oh, it's kind of like a mix between the eucalyptus and a flower. Okay. I will hide this reference for a moment, so we can then I will create a new layer for the color. We will set these to multiply, so we can sketch under this one. Now from the colors I will go for this midtone brown. I will change the color to something a little bit more solid. And let's sketchy but still be texture, the same brush as we used before. I'll just fill in the silhouette. All right, now I will bring back the reference and try to focus on the shadows and highlights. I will alphalock it or actually, let's create a clipping mask. It's easier for us to adjust new layer clipping mask. Alphaog clipping mask, basically they do the same, but with alphaocdraw on the same layer. With clipping mask, you can just adjust easier because it's on a separate layer. Now I will take a darker and more saturated color. And I will create shadows based on the reference imagining. The cylinder as I talked about in the previous lessons here will a little bit less of the shadow because I don't have the same plant here. They have the shadow here also. Probably from the plant, I can reduce that. Then I will add the shadow here on the thumb, under the other finger. Then here I can recreate the shadows in between the fingers, even though we group them more. Here I'm creating a curve because of the knuckle, again, the cylinder shape. Then we need the shadow in the palm for the rest. We are following our sketch. Now let's also add some lighter tones, and they're mainly on the left side and on top of the fingers, I will make this smaller. We can focus on simplified shapes. I have to take the color again. Now I can add the highlights here on this side, I reduce the opacity now on full opacity. And then I can add the highlights here as well on top of the finger and top of the other fingers as well. All right, now let's add the line art on top and we can hide the reference. We don't need it anymore. Now we will follow our sketch with the darker shade and create nice outlines for this one as well. I need to make the brush with full opacity. I can actually show the canvas on the side so I can see if everything works well in the smaller preview, for example, here I can see that this finger looks a little bit too wide and chunky for my liking. I will make it a little bit more narrow and more slim. And I will also move the layer on top of the other sketch layers and I can reduce the, the opacity of the sketch later on as well. For now, I will keep it as it is, so I can see it better here. I'm making these lines a little bit wider on top and more narrow at the bottom because I think it looks better on the sketch. As you can see, I'm also adding the fingernails. If you have a problem with adjusting or checking how they should be angled, you can always look at the reference. But imagine if you are looking at the finger from the side, you still see a bit of the flesh. You don't see the whole fingernail. That's why I'm leaving some flesh on the side here. Then I can add some darker color to the fingernails. For this illustration, I think this darker nail polish works quite nicely. All right. I think this hand turned out quite nicely. I will just color in the flower now before we move on to the next part. All right. When you are happy with everything, you can hide the sketch layers. And check if you like your illustration here on the side. Now we can look at another reference. 12. Project Illustration #3: All right, now let's bring up another reference. One of the images that I collected on the mood board. Now I think we can take something with open palm because we're drawing a lot of the fingers. I quite like this one, but maybe we can turn the palm a bit. Let's see if I have a better reference. Sometimes when you are drawing for your own illustrations, it's best to take your own pictures if you need exact reference for the hands because you can basically never find exactly what you want. All right. I will take this other brush again and I will sketch the basic silhouette for this one. I will try to start with the palm, and as I said, I will turn the palm a little bit more. I need to start somewhere here. I have some space for the fore arm. If you imagine the box as we talked about at the beginning, the box will look something like this. We are turning the hand from this type of position to something like this. All right, here I like that the fingers are grouped together. I will do that. We are creating this ten shape as we talked about. Then the pinky, I think we can angle a little bit to break the silhouette. Then the fingers, there will be somewhere around here. The thumb is on the other side. I will sketch the oval for the fleshy part. Then we will add angled part, the triangle for the bone as we talked about before. Then we can connect it here. We need the middle part of the palm, then the wrist and the forearm. I will choose the canvas as a preview so I can see the hand from more like a distance. I can see that I need to move the thumb and make it a little bit bigger. And I think I will angle it, I will keep it straight as a straight line on this side and then angle it on the side where there is flesh on the top. We have this rounder shape because the fingernail is here. Here. I can angle it a little bit more and because it was on the reference, actually, there is this little curve on the palm. I will add that there, oops. And then create this curve here. I like this bending of the curve going on here. I need to make sure that the middle finger is the longest, then the pinky is here. Then I can redraw the sketch on a separate layer and make sure that everything works. I will go back to canvas here. This one I will move a little bit. This one should end where the wrist is, somewhere here also. This curve needs to be near the wrist. Here I'm creating the overlap because we see these fingers which are closer to us, they are overlapping the other fingers, even though this reference is a little bit different. All right, now I need to add the pinky, just to break the silhouette, I need to move this line because the other finger looked too wide. Now, I reduced it a little bit. We will have the shadow here, also here. If we look at this reference, you can see that this part is similar to this other one, but we rotated the hand a little bit. Now I just need to check if the alignments are okay for the fingers and the shadows will be a little bit different. Let's see on this one, I think I can make it a little bit more narrow here. This one should be curved. I think the thumb is nice. I just need to curve it here a little bit. And I will also make the brace little bit more narrow, like more slim. I will adjust these lines a little bit too. Okay. But other than that, I think it works. So now I can fill in the shapes with color the same way as we did before. I will set this layer to multiply the same with this one. I will create a new layer under the sketch layers. I will take a lighter color for this one and change the brush. Now I will just fill in the silhouette to help us show that this is palm. We will add shadows For that one, I will take a little bit darker color and we can test it out on a separate layer with clipping mask to separate the fingers. I will add the shadow somewhere here in the middle part. Then let's check the reference if it helps us. We will add the shadow to the middle part of the palm to show that there is a muscle. Then the thumb sparing. Basically we are separating the thumb from the rest of the hand. Then we will add a shadow here just to separate also the pinky from the rest of the hand. That should work for this one, even though it's a little bit different. Now I will switch again to the Canvas preview, and I will add a line. So basically the outlines here with a little bit darker color to redefine the handy. When you are happy with this drawing, you can reduce or hide the sketches and fix the color if you need to. As I see I have some gaps here. Who, what I think we can do on this sketch as well is to find the line art. Create the clipping mask. No, actually not clipping mask. I wanted to select alphalog from the darker colors. I think we can emphasize some of the shadows. I'll make the brush 100% Again, there will be a shadow here on this side of the palm a little bit here. I can add some darker color here. These darker shadows where the fingers meet. And just to emphasize the ends of the fingers here, I think that works pretty nicely. I hope that you like your sketches so far. I can always make this finger a little bit more defined that we see it from the bottom. We can add some of these lines also on the other fingers if you would like. But I think here it's not necessary. Maybe I can add it here to the pinky. I think I like it only on this side just to keep it simple. All right, now I will do a few more adjustments like this. I will show you the outcome in a moment. I made the hand a little bit more narrow on this side. I just moved the line little bit higher up to have the bit more lean and gracious because I wanted to achieve that type of look. Now let's move on to the next one. 13. Project Illustration #4: For this one, I think we can choose one of the more storytelling moments where the hands are holding something. I was thinking maybe holding a book can be nice. But I think when the hand is like with this finger hidden behind the book is a little bit nicer. I found this reference, which is unfortunately a little bit dark. Hopefully you can see it. Let's see, something like this. Yeah, little bit. I mean, you will see what I'm sketching, right? Let's catch on a new layer with a softer brush or any brush that you like, I will try to focus first on the shape of the hand, which is here. First we have this elongated box like we practiced. This part is a little bit angled. Then we have the finger here. The thumb goes up here. Let's sketch this one to help us. And then we can add the angle and the thumb. Then we need the arms going down here. We need to sketch the wrist here. Then we need the other arm as well, which is next to it. The wrists are approximately in the same height, but in this angle. Because of the perspective here, there is this soft curve. Let me make it a little bit bigger if I can. Yeah, there is this soft curve here. I need to choose the color again, so we can sketch. With that, I will sketch the curve here. Then this part ends here. The pinky knuckle is in the middle of it, this type of angle. Then the thumb goes out a little bit. So there is this gap. I don't have it here, so close. I can create the gap here. Then I can move this other hand, there is more space. Okay, let's catch the book as well. I need to make the reference smaller, so we have space. The book is angled and it's in perspective, but you can always check where are the lines in relative to the other parts. I will sketch it something like this. Then the book needs volume. It's similar to the box we were set when we're practicing drawing hands. And then this line goes a little bit up, It's also curved, then this part goes here, so we can create that line something like this. But it needs to end higher up. I went too far. I need to connect it behind the thumb like we have here. Then there is this other line going towards the thumb. It will be somewhere here. We need to align it with the other blade of the paper. The pages of the book needs to be aligned. They just need to work together. Then we have this other blade of the paper, which goes down here. So we can do this. This finger, I think it's too long, so we will need to shorten it. And also it ends a little bit lower. As I said, the pages of the book needs to be, all of them need to be aligned. This box of the book works in perspective. All right, I think this works. Let's adjust the hand. This finger needs to go lower because of the book. Then we can add the knuckles, so we can imagine that. And we can maybe use the other reference for that. We have the knuckles and overlapping fingers. All right, so I can sketch on a separate layer. Now, just to redefine the sketch a little bit better, I want to have these lines straight. Then looking at this finger, I can see it straight up here. We have three lines in different angles here. I can just connect it. We can do the same for this other hand. Let's look at the other reference again. Okay, let's switch to canvas to check if the drawing works. I think here I need to reduce the volume a little bit, but other than that I think it's working. Let's see and add color. I will set this to multiply as before. On the new layer, I will choose a different brush. You can choose any color you want. Maybe something you haven't used yet. I'll just keep it simple and I will use the same color as I just did before, just color in the silhouette like we did previously. Now I will add shadow on a separate layer. I will use this darker tone and I'll just imagine that the light is coming from the top. So I will add a shadow from the book and on the bottom parts of the hands. As before, I'm imagining the shape of the muscle here. The shadow is a little bit more curved here, it's more straight, following the shape of the hand. The same goes on this other side here, I will make it a little bit curved because of the knuckle. We can always double check with the reference on this one, it's too dark, but you can see on this one it's a little bit curved here. Then of course, there is shadow on the bottom side of the finger, but it's better to check on your own drawing just to see if it works. Here we have a shadow from the book. I will add a shadow on each of the fingers. All right. Now I will color the book on a separate layer. It's easier for me. I will move the layer and I will choose of white color so we can see it against the background. Now let's add outlines on the top. And I will take this darker color and just follow the sketch like we did before. And I can read, use the sketch more so it's easier for me to see the outline. I mean, the new outline, so we can see what we are drawing better. We also need to add the fingernails here because we can still see them on some of the fingers. We will add them here on the top. Always double check with our reference, I mean, the artwork in smaller scale. Then here I can read this. I think we can see the less of the finger. We need to add some shadow on the book as well. We need to create the clipping mask with a little bit darker color so we can take something what we have on the canvas already. We can add some shadow to the bottom part of the book where the leaf, the book or the page of the book is turned and also on the side. Okay, if you are happy, we can hide the sketches and check if we filled in all the silhouette, which I can see. We still need to fill some parts also in the shadow area, also on the book. I think with the outline. I think we can make it a little bit more angular in this part, so we see a little bit more of the finger. All right, I think this works better. I will draw maybe one more or two more illustrations to fill the page, and then I will show you that one as well. 14. It's Your Turn: All right. I added one more illustration into this collection of hand illustrations. Here you can see all the drawings that we created during the lessons. I hope that you enjoyed creating these hand illustrations. To summarize, don't be afraid to use references because using references can always help you to practice creating these illustrations. Also consider a perspective, how the fingers are overlapping each other. And think how the simplified shapes would look like in space or within the three D space. And try to simplify and use minimalistic silhouettes and lines. How you can simplify what you see in real life. I hope that you enjoy this class. If you had fun and you learn some new things, please leave a review. I would appreciate that. Also, I would love to see your project. Don't forget to upload it and share it with others. 15. What to Draw Next?: How did it go? I can't wait to see all your awesome artwork. Please share your drawings and illustrations, also the work in progress if you want. In the project section, if you want to expand on the knowledge you learned in this class. You can watch my other classes about characters, also about colors called color palette and color and light master class. Visit my teacher profile to find them. If you would like me to share your projects on Instagram, please take me in the Instagram stories in the post and post description so I can help you and your art to be discovered by more people. Thank you so much for watching and I hope that you share your illustration project with others and see you in the next class. Bye.