Drawing Fundamentals: How to Draw a Hand Holding Objects

1. Introduction: Hey, my name is arruniya and welcome to our drawing class. I'm an artist that specializes in drawing and painting, and I really love experimenting with different media. In this class will be breaking down how to Draw a Hand Holding Objects into different components, including the fundamentals of a hand. Drawing two hands together, shading details. This project is beginner friendly and guided step-by-step. Our goal is to practice our drawing fundamentals and use the creative process and the Drawing Method you can apply to different Art projects in the future. Over the span of these bite-sized lessons, you'll not only learn how to draw hands, but how to break them down into simpler shapes, along with Realistic shading techniques for pencil drawing. With these tools, you'll feel more confident in drawing other types of hands and imposes. I'd love to see your artwork, so feel free to share your completed artworks with me for online feedback. Now let's hop in and get started. 2. Brainstorming the Drawing: Welcome, welcome. If we're going over materials, I would say scrap paper, paper to work with little later. Make sure you do have an eraser and make sure you do have a pencil. And then if you have colored pencils or something to color with that would be awesome. So on this paper today, I would say that we're brainstorming, so we're coming up with some ideas, but we're also sketching. So it's not just a paper that you're gonna get rid of later. Sometimes we keep brainstorming or sketching papers because they help build ideas to today, as I mentioned, we're gonna be looking at some hands before I keep going. And I know hands can be kinda tricky or complicated or make it a little nervous. They do for me too sometimes. But the big thing to remember today's we're just learning something basic. So we're just learning how to hold a hand like this or draw him like this. Then we're gonna be putting the hands kinda together in a little hand position like that. It'll do have a couple of pictures that we can do today. And the big fun part actually is you don't have to draw the whole hand today. You're only going to be drawing the outside and you want to put something on the inside. So for example, if there's something you really enjoy, like my water bottle, you couldn't put that in your hands if you want. If there's some other stuff that you really like, you can put that in there as well. That's what you want to brainstorm. What do you want the main component in your hands to be? To want to pretend old like a puddle of water. What would you like to do? Right? So before I do get started, I just wanted to show you some examples of the hands that I was talking about before we actually draw that will maybe give you some ideas for what you want to do. So first, let me show you this one because this one is not the angle we're going to be doing, but it is kinda like what we're doing, where we're going to have a couple of hands and we're going to put something inside. So you can go the more kind of interesting route here and you can hold a book if you'd like, you can hold a bed. This one's kind of interesting because you can take something that's not really realistic. Like realistically you can't really hold a bed, right? You can hold like a toy bed. But think about things that you like. So what are some things that you like? This one is a bed, you can keep it a little simpler if you'd like. Sometimes I really like to go towards things that I enjoy. I really like leaves and stuff. That's something I enjoy painting a lot. And it may so something animated related. You can also decide later if you just want to draw in the hands first and get started hedgehog, yeah, that one's cool too. You just might want to figure out what perspective you're looking at the hedgehog or you're looking at from like you're holding in the back. I would say the big focus today when you're thinking about your hands, it's just think about shapes because everything is kind of built up with shapes. And you're also going to think about how the shapes relate to each other, right? Because like your thumb was not gonna be ginormous compared to everything else. They all work together to create different shapes and spaces. So just something to think about there, I'm going to show my second image before we start. This is a little bit closer to our perspective that we're going to work. I really enjoy about this one is you can kinda see you at hands, right? You can see the hands on the outside. You can see them coming together. But you'll see that they're also covered by something. So it's not as hard as you think it's going to be, right? The big goal here is to build the shapes together. And then you can always erase and add things on top if you'd like. You can change the tones, you can change the things that are on the inside. That's okay as well. If you're not sure what to put on the inside yet, that's okay. Just keep your brainstorming paper kinda handy and then we can decide together and what to put on the inside. But the big nice thing about this, as you can see that most of the space in the hands are covered, right? You're not going to lose out to MAC layer. You'll have an opportunity to fill that up if you need. Okay? 3. How to Draw a Hand: I'm not going to start our good copy just yet. I just want you to go over some of the base parts of a hand with me. So that's what I'm gonna do on the bottom of my Sketch sheet here. Once we have the idea of what a hand looks like, We're gonna go on to our big sheets. So let's jump in. I'm just going to show you the hand that I was talking about earlier. Drawing lots of different styles of hands is a bit more advanced. That's why we're switching to just one hand or one perspective of the hand for now, basically we're going to find the parts of the hand that we see their tears. A funny kind of note that's made about hands. If you see the hands, even if you look at your own handled, put my hand up here. You can see the top of your hands kinda have like a mountain shape right there, not all flat. You'll even see my hands. Your hands might look slightly different. Everyone's hands are right, so, but there's three main sections. So you've got the middle part of your hand, your fingers, your thumb. That's kinda what we're going to build in. And then there's other sections within that. What we'll do now is maybe on your scrap paper. So this is my scrap paper here. We're just going to draw one hand together justifying the important parts. And then that's going to help us build the hand on her on our final piece. But what I'd like you to do maybe is we're just going to find a rough kinda hand shape in here for the base of your hand. This big part I want you to just start with maybe like a rectangular shape. So we're just learning how to draw just a basic hand to start. So you have an understanding all the parts we're going to look at on our on our bigger sheet. I am gonna go a little bit darker just so you can see, but just a reminder to keep yours really liked. You'll see here I tried my best to make a rectangle. You can see it's kinda curved at the bottom. Can make it a little bit bigger if you'd like, just start with a basic shape. But I'm just going to find the fingers here at the top. Even if you look at your own fingers, everybody, you'll notice your middle one is usually the longest. So if you're ready for the hands are like the fingers part here. We're not trying to thumb yet. Don't worry about your thumb. But you'll see here that usually the middle one is the longest, right? And then these ones here, this sometimes depends. It depends on what kind of like your fingers. Sometimes sometimes people have a longer a second one here. Sometimes they're about the same, usually just for a rough guess, I would say just keep them about the same to start minds are usually like that. And then your pinky is lot shorter and then your thumb. Okay? So if you're ready, you can kinda take a guess to this space here. You can almost use that as a reference. A little bit smaller than this or about the size of your rectangle. We're going to just draw a mountain up top or you can just put a little guideline here. So if this is my section here, I'm gonna make with my fingers. I'm just gonna make a little bit taller. Just going to mark off the top here. So just kinda measured this part, my hand. And then I just measured the top. So this is probably the tallest hand that I have. Are the tallest finger that I have. Sorry. The one you're comfortable when you're ready. If you think about it, there's only four fingers here, right? So this part, this section, if you want to just draw a couple of a rough lines up here, roughly your hands, your fingers will stay within this section, right? I would say the pinky is a little bit wider, but for now it's fine. But from here you can kinda build a mountain shape if you'd like going down. So top point, It's enough to be pointing necessarily, but it's like a mountain. This is just a guide for your fingers. So they're not all going to touch there. Maybe they're not all going to perfectly fit in. That's okay. But roughly your four fingers are gonna go there. If you're Drawing for fingers, if you think about it, that splits into three lines. I would say just try to split them into four little sections. So I'm gonna go 123. If you notice that one is bigger than the other, you can start to change it up. But really roughly here, I drew three lines to separate to make four sections. I'm also noticing right now, minds are kinda diagonal. So I'm going to straighten them out a little bit. So roughly I've got those lines there. Don't worry if they're not too perfect yet. If you want to curve up the top of the fingers, you can. So this is where they might not follow the guideline exactly. You're just kind of bending, are following those fingers spaces a little bit. Wherever that mountain line is, you fingers might fall within there. There might look a little cartoony to start. That's okay. Just make sure the middle one is about the taller shape that you have, a pinky right now you'll notice that at least on the reference here, it does get a bit wider on your hand. So if you want to try this with me, everybody, you can make your rectangle little bit bigger, but you can TB edge of my pinky. I'm just making it kinda curved in a little bit of extra space now. It's just where we are. We've got our kinda like a rough rectangle shape. We've got our four fingers. We kind of curved up the side of our pinky here. If you want, you can think about it. The edges of your, these lines here, they kinda come down a little bit. So if you wanted to have some of these kind of curve in there, curved down a little bit. Have that. So just as a reference, you can look at your own hands as well. That thumb here you'll see it does depend on which hand you're doing, but for now I'm just doing my left hand. It'll just be mirrored for the other side, but the thumb does come out of your hands a little bit. So if you think about it, you can draw it like an extra section here. Usually not for everybody, but you can see how my thumb curves out a little bit. The curves right? So at the edge of this, a little bit lower, I'm just going to have low curved a little rectangle here if you'd like. But this curves into your finger. It will start as a rectangle. I'll show it. I'm going to tell you how it changes because right now it looks like my hands are really squished, right? It looks like it's really squished. I'm going to show you how to change that in a moment. The big thing about making it not squishes, you've got to make this bottom bit here, come out a little bit. So you just come out and then back in. Make start to erase some of the shapes a little bit as well. A lot of people tens are different, right? If you look up my pinky to see how short my pinky is. So your fingers to and kind of a just slightly if you'd like, you can adjust things. But there's three more sections I just wanted to show you. And then I would say the base of your hand is done. All these extra lines and things, those are details you can add later. I'm just erasing it so you can kinda see it lightly, just so we don't forget where these came from. But the last three, everybody is not too tough. I want you to think about your hand or your palm, just like you see it in the picture in three sections. So the thumb part, you'll see the thumb part is it's not fatty, but like it's like a muscle. It's a bigger part of your hand here, this thick part here. So if you want, you can kinda find this overly shape. It kinda goes into the middle of your hand here. If you want to draw it in as like block it in like that you can. But this parts usually pretty big. This is the thick, thick but roughly draw it in. You'll see that if I'm looking at my rectangle from before and making sure that I hit about at least halfway. There is an oval or section here on the top that's kind of like an oval if you think about like this, roughly it's not perfectly like this. I know that much, but roughly it's like an oval here. So that's like this part. Does it heads up as to what I just did. I added one big one here. There's like a long oval section here at the top. And then there's a third section here. So if you want to start drawing lines, identifying lines, you can draw those in if you'd like. These are now just detailed lines. So at this point you've got the base of your hand already in there, right? For your sections of your hands, if you want to draw a couple of lines and you can usually like thirds roughly, right? But at this point you've got your hand, you've got the base of your hand. You want to draw a little wrist, Go for it. Usually your wrist isn't that small, so make sure it matches up to how wide your you'd make your handle a bit wider if you need. My hands feel like they're a bit wider. But at this point we've got the base. So if you think about it like this, everybody, what we just drew is just like this. But this time like the other one's a little bit curved so you might see some of the fingers get a little bit squished. Or you might see this part being a little bit shorter, but similar idea, right? I'd say the biggest difference is just this part looks a lot bigger because of the way you looking at it. But you can draw them just like this if you'd like. Okay? 4. Sketching the Drawing: If anyone's curious to what I'm gonna do right now, I'm just finding the middle of my sheet. So I'm going to be drawing two hands if you think about it. So if you want to draw to with me based on the idea of a hand that we do have. Now, you can start to split your sheet in half. I'm just looking on my screen just so I can roughly find the middle. So I'm just Just roughly drawing a line from myself. This is just so I can separate the hands that I have roughly. I'm going to be erasing this a little later. It's draw it in nice and light. So same idea if you're ready to start your hands, just like we started with our rough sketch, you're just going to find those rectangles shapes. This time I'm just going to make them a little bit bigger. Because if you think about it, I want to have to. So I'm gonna make to kinda rectangle shapes. If I'm finding them about in the middle of this line. This is the middle, very roughly on each side. It's almost like I did a T-shape here. But roughly there's gonna be a rectangle shape on this side. If you want space for the arm, then maybe you'll make this a little bit smaller, but it's almost like a trapezoid. That's what it reminds me of. Right. Constructs. So it's usually bigger at the top. The bottom. I'm just going to draw to kinda rectangular or trapezoid shapes here you'll see that they are kinda close if you want them touching, bring them a little closer. I'm gonna get us close to this line as I can. Maybe I'll have them touch them, having them touch him just moving the edge slightly. At this point I have two rectangular type shapes. I don't remember if you're drawing something big on the inside. You don't really have to Draw a lot of this stuff on the inside. So it's not a big deal. Just start with your to kinda maybe trapezoid, a rectangular shapes. If them to your curbing your hands a little bit. You'll see that all don't like my mountain isn't as tall as it was before. Gonna see. They are still as tall when you spread them out. But when I go like this, they're a little bit curved. So if you want to find that mountains usually for what I did before us, this is about the same height as the fingers here. Same thing here. This is about the same height of fingers here. Remember if you're trying it with your hands. For this one, the second fingers to tallest, right? For this one, it is the second finger but front from the other way. So make sure that you're mountains. If you're drawing mountains and just measuring the bottom here, roughly measuring the top. Mark that off for me. Bottom, top, bottom, top. You want them to be more curved? Maybe they're a little shorter than this, this time, right? But roughly my mountain shape, it's almost like it's pointing inward to kinda see it. Right? Two little mountain shapes. They don't have to be perfect guys. Just, just try some base shapes together. Don't worry too much. Just trying to find these little mountain shapes and then we'll go from there. But from this idea, we build it with this. So you should be okay, I will keep going. The big difference here is if you want them to curve a little bit more than maybe their curved a little bit more. What you can do for curves, you can try to draw them almost like little rectangle shapes. So I'll show you how to do that. First. What I would do is if you want, you can just start separate them into four. And you'll see this time they are kinda diagonal. The reason why is because I want them to almost look like they're curving a little bit. I'm not exactly like my hand did. That's kind of an awkward pose. But if you think about it, they're kind of curving a little bit. So if you want them to curved a little bit, start off with some diagonal lines. At this point roughly. Don't worry if you're not 100% about these lines yet because you'll start to adjust those as we go. So because right now my fingers are really wide. What we're eventually going to do is we're going to find all those little sections, right? So will find those in a moment. Don't sweat it yet. What I am going to find next know everybody is my thumbs because these are like the wide parts, especially in that angle. Let's see how big this section looks frame. So I do want to check in on the next person, but if you were thinking about your thumb, at least in that pose for me, my thumb is pretty big, so I'm leaving quite a bit of extra space. Quiet a bit of extra space if you want to practice it with your own hand. I can even go a little bit bigger here because I my my thumbs curving a little bit. So that's kinda why I'm leaving a bit of extra space. If you want to think of it like that, you can always adjust it later. But roughly, I've got that big thumb section going. Okay. So I think the big thing you're gonna notice for me that I am going to eventually change is this is very straight, this line is very straight. So eventually it's going to curve a little bit. So if you wanted to prove anything like that, you are welcome to This is the part I want to kinda add in next. I know every hand is different. But for now I'm going to add this is like a curved, so this is a part of the hand, this part of the hand, the curvy part of the hand. So if you want to curve back to your base here, the middle of your hand, you can. And actually what I noticed in the picture a lot is do you notice like all thumbs are different, everybody sounds different. But my phone doesn't curve as much as the one in the demo. Do you see that? My answer isn't curve as high. So maybe you look at your thumb, decided it doesn't mind curved that much, just mine. Dribble a little bit. I would say mine curves a little bit, so I'm just going to crave it a little bit. And you'll notice that the top of the thumb is a little bit flatter. Flatter here because it has a nail, right. So this is the only know that I can partially see. That's why it's partially flat there. So if you want to figure out your little curve on each side, kinda flat areas. If you want to have more flat areas and there's a little bit of overlap here. So I would say that that's the part I'm starting to build, right? Because of the angle that this person is kinda sharing their item with. This part looks really big personally to me. So if you want to make it a little bit bigger, you can. But we're going to start building our item in whatever items you'd like to have so it can cover up a lot of this stuff eventually as well. Okay. So just kinda like before I'm just finding the three parts of my hand right now. So the muscle, this oval and this part. So because of the perspective or the angle I'm looking at it, this big oval looks extra bag. So if you want to draw it like that, you can remember a lot of it's gonna be covered anyway. So it doesn't really matter if it looks a bit odd or a bit wonky. You just want to find those base shapes. So it's a roughly I've got this part of my hand in. If I'm trying to find it here. This part of my hand and I'm going lightly because I'm probably going to erase and add some details and then the other part of my hand, so this is where I'm gonna make the oval. Does everyone see my pinky where my pinky would be? Where my pinky would be. I'm just going to curve it a little bit closer to the inside. If you want them to touch a little bit, you can have that happen. But the three sections right now it's dots. That's my three sections, 123123. And then my fingers. Even if it looks kind of odd, don't erase the whole thing. You can erase some parts, you can adjust them parts. But if you get rid of all of it, you don't have a like you can't look back at it, right. If you want to add your wrist, kind of peeking through. It seemed out of my risks that rest is definitely getting to small at the bottom there. So I'm just gonna make it a bit wider. But at this point we've got the base and they are curving in a little bit. If you look at my hands, if I'm curving them in, my hands, even space out a little bit interesting. But they're all like little curved rectangles. There's like three sections, 123. You can find those if you don't feel comfortable with them, you can just draw the lines and then you can start to decide what goes on the inside. I'm just going to draw in the outline of the top of my fingers just as a heads up to what I'm doing. No matter what you end up doing. All just remember though, which one's the tallest finger. When you're drawing that, that one looks a little bit longer if you need. So if you're ready to start adding anything, everybody, you can start to kinda erase the play around with that. Add some more finger details. If you don't really want those to show, you can adjust those as well. Because these lines are quite intense. You can just look at your hand, right? You can soften up those lines a little bit. So I would say like, I have dislike line going up here. I'm looking at my hand again. I have like a light line that goes here. And then roughly you're just see me adding a couple of extra lines. Everybody, if you're ready, start to maybe erase things, add your own personal touch. Don't sweat it too much. We're just giving these ago today. Just give it a try. If you want to add a little sweater or something peeking through. I have my my little splitter sleeve 5. Shading the Drawing: You'll start to see me, everybody just adding a little bit of shadow. I'm just going to use pencil today if you'd like to add color, go for it and you can definitely add a light shade. I'm just adding a bit of pencil shading. I will pull out some hand references, but remember, lots of things just like hands, everything takes a little to practice. So when you're Practice, don't think of it like this is a really hard drawing and I don't like to shine it on. Think of it more like I'm still learning. So this is a great starting point if you think of it like that. So at this point I'm just going to put something in here to look like it's holding. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna kinda roughly erase a little bit of this stuff here. I'm still keeping most of the lines. You'll see me just erasing a little bit. And I'm just going to start a little pile of soil. I'm just going over the this odd pile of soil in my hands. So if that's what you're looking at you like, I might add a little bit of color here just so it doesn't look so odd. I'm also adding little scraps, so it looks like little bits of soil. You are welcome to keep it as the pencil sketch I would recommend because we did spend quite a bit of time just sketching. If you just want to add a little bit of shaded areas, if you want, you can. The only areas I'm adding shading is just around the edges of my fingers kinda. You can already see it like almost like if you're hand had an outline with pen, you can see every kind of separator section. I'm going to add a bit of extra shadow or outline it a little bit. So that's the only extra touches I would do. I would also highly recommend reading the date on there in the corner. So you kinda remember when you did this, if you ever wanted to come back and touch base. But you'll see me just going around the edges now. I'm just going to add a couple of leaf shapes or something. Like a little leaf shapes. Just started like a little tiny plants. Add a couple of those and then that's pretty much it here for me. If you're not sure how it's gone, you'll find that even just adding a little bit of shading. I'm not even adding it around the middle, I'm just adding it around the edges will really help find your spaces. If you feel like there's still kinda rough lines. If you do have any rough lines that you would like to erase, for example, like I still have some of my mountain lines from before. If you want to erase any of those, you can. If you want to keep them because they're kind of like a guideline from before as well. You can do that. Okay. I am going to take a couple of minutes here just to shade in some areas, just to make it look a little more realistic as I did start the class. Our big focus today is shapes, as well as how they relate to each other. So proportion, how those shapes work together to look a little more realistic. So that's what you're thinking about when you build your shapes. As I mentioned, don't worry too much about the word Hand. Hand can be really big and intimidating if you think a bit of shapes coming together to make something, it does make a little bit easier to think about. Sometimes, it also makes it easier to think about when you're thinking about curving the shapes or make them a little more straight, they don't all come in the same sizes and shapes. So they can look slightly different from one another. So don't sweat that. As long as you're keeping some of the main components, I am just going in with a little bit of pencil today. We're just making my way to this little plant area here just to make it look more soil like I'm just adding a little sections of soil or little bumps and areas, little bits of soil on the outside of my hands here. We're on the open parts of my hands where maybe the soil kinda spread apart a little bit. So it does look more natural versus like a perfect lump of soil. I'm also making sure that I do have a plant in here. So I'm just going around the plant. And of course you're just makes sure to have at least a little bit of line work or lines sections in your hands. You can shade a little bit as well if you'd like. Just to bring it to life a little more, shading a little bit, even though their soil represents I don't want them to get confused from each other, but to show that it is part of the hand or shaded a little bit will help me out. Also, any guidelines you'd like to erase. I assume you kinda touching up or erasing as I go here. But I want to make sure by the end of it here, do have some shading around the edges of my finger. Big part of making hands look kinda realistic. It's figuring out the proportions vary now how they relate to each other. I remember what the mountain usually your second finger or your third, I guess your thumb and then your second fingers to Tallest. So that's kinda the the guideline that I was keeping in mind for myself as well. The middle. Also, if your fingers are kinda squished because they're curving, you'll have a little bit less space to work with or more shadows kinda appearing. So if you wanted to have more those you could. And because this is possibly usable content, to make sure I can see all of my lines, I'm gonna do a quick outline around the edges just so they are visible. So if you're curious why things go up a folder or more feasible than that's probably why in a couple of different directions to even outside of the areas that stopped really abruptly. So many areas that are really dark and then it gets really light in-between I'm trying to shapes so it balances each other out. So shading back side. You can also experiment with different skin tones. Of course, skin comes in lots of different colors, different shapes, different sizes or ethnicities, lots of different factors that go into skin tone, making different values of skin. So feel free to play along with that if you'd like. Wherever I want some more defined lines, I'm just going back around shading as well while it to that so I can find those areas. My sweater right now has this almost like the stripes texture lines. So extra shading. I'm just going to add a couple of stripes outlining a lines that I really want to pop out, curving some of these sections of this part here. So if you want to curb Riyadh any lines there you can. There you have it. This is our Hand Holding drawing from today, as we did mentioned before, our biggest focus with shapes of building up the shapes of our hand, as well as proportion. Thinking about all the different elements of your hand and how they relate and work well with one another. Remember hands and skin and lots of different things coming in various shapes and sizes. Thank you so much for joining us and we look forward to seeing you next time. Bye. Hey