How to Draw Hands Using Contours

How to Draw Hands Using Contours

Drawing hands is one of the most difficult topics of life drawing. Every figurative artist comes up with a question about how to draw hands. Hands are often present in portraits, and knowing how to draw them realistically is very important for an artist.

There is only one way to achieve good results in drawing hands—by knowing the hand's construction. Otherwise, you would have to draw what you see, and this easily results in mistakes.

There is one important thing you need to know when drawing foreshortened objects such as hands in perspective. When a finger is foreshortened, we do not mark its outlines, instead, we only use contours. A hand without perspective can be portrayed as a simple outline; every child did such a sketch. There are no complications here. However, if a finger is turned away or toward a viewer, it is seen in perspective and foreshortened. The only way to make a realistic drawing of it is to use contours. First, we draw a contour of one joint, then a contour of another joint. Then, we repeat the same exercise for the next phalange, and so on. A finger in our drawing would consist of a series of contours—a contour of a joint, then a contour of a phalange, a contour of a joint, and a contour of a phalange, followed by a joint once again and finally the contour of a fingertip and the nail. There is no outline in this drawing, only contours. Of course, when we see a finger without perspective, an outline is more descriptive and serves its purpose well. The same is true not only for fingers, but also for any other body parts in perspective. For example, a foreshortened body of a hand also has to be depicted using contours. Outlines would not help as much in this case. You may find brilliant examples in drawings by the Old Masters that reveal how they used contours.

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