A lot of people struggle with how to draw a hand.
But truth be told, if you can draw a person's body then the hands shouldn't be any more difficult.
If you aren't after a particularly detailed look, then the most basic shapes can be used to portray the hands and feet.
The right proportions and gestures can be captured using only a few well placed lines.
The subtle features and careful articulation make hands and feet truly amazing structures though, so they're definitely not something you want to gloss over.
Learning how to draw a hand can help you capture a whole other level of emotion and expression from your subject.
An important fact of drawing is that some characteristics will always take more planning and time than others.
One small part of your drawings might end up taking up to half the total time, while the other sections just fall into place with almost no problems at all.
Fingers and palms are often hard to capture accurately and so by learning and practicing how to draw a hand properly you can save a lot of time and trouble in the future.
The bones are a good place to begin.
There are three joints on each finger and they each span right back to the wrist.
This is where you find the two bones of the forearm end in knobbles which are distinctive features on either side of the wrist.
Looking at the joints you'll see they have a curved appearance which is comes from the fingers all having different lengths.
The depth of these arcs and their size will change depending on the subject, but by taking this simple point into consideration you'll see a great improvement in the standard of your sketches of hands.
Looking at the hand from the outside you can see many clues to its internal structure.
The knuckles have noticeable bulges and the thumb joints and finger joints are marked by wrinkled skin.
By paying attention to the back side you'll notice ligaments tracing along the back of the hand, accentuating their mark, and following the path of the bones.
Moving to the inside of the hand you'll notice that the palm has three distinctive, fleshy sections which make up the main palm.
The fingers are similar, in that they have three fleshy portions too.
Depending on the motion, angle, and activity of each digit, these can change significantly.
Careful consideration and shading are the most important tools for capturing the shape and size of each segment.
Other points to consider when learning how to draw a hand are that the thumb is the exception, in that it curls opposite to the fingers, and it only has two joints associated with it.
Distinctive curves can also be seen on the finger nails which help establish the angle of the fingertips and also help to portray the correct position of the digits.
Like everything else, hands have depth to them.
Many rookies show the hands to be flatter than they are, and this should be avoided.
They have a very real thickness and each finger is a three section tube.
An easy way to help how to draw a hand properly is to use a series of boxes, which might help understand the three dimensional proportions before rounding and making the sections more realistic.