A Boy With Fruit BAsket (oil on canvas 70 cm × 67 cm (27.6 in × 26.4 in)

These resolution of my highier photos show some of my own reproductions of famous oil paintings and drawings. Each Coloring & Drawing was prepared according to the techniques, materials and sizes are the original work. The completion time depends on the complexity of the work, just to give an example, I worked for two weeks to make "The boy with basket of fruits", while a drawing as "Oak and dyer's greenweed" take me a few hours of work.

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Hand Study With Full Dicriptions

“Easily the most asked question I get is “how do you draw caricatures?”. However a close runner up is “how do you draw hands?”. I’m not exactly the king of drawing hands, but I have made a special study of them as they are very important when doing comic book type work… hands and their gestures are a big part of “acting” and therefore of storytelling.

Next to faces, hands are probably the most expressive and intricate part of the human form. In fact, humans probably spend more time looking at their hands than they do looking at anything else over their entire lives. Being that we are all so familiar with the way hands look, a poorly drawn hand sticks out like a sore thumb (sorry about the pun). Oddly enough, hands are something that most artists struggle to draw well. So, with that in mind I thought I’d do a tutorial on my approach to drawing hands.

I’m a cartoonist at heart, so the hands I draw are not realistic hands by most definitions. However my style of cartooning lends itself more to realistic representation than, say, a certain four fingered gloved mouse or other much more cartoony characters do. Therefore a lot of the information in this tutorial will apply to drawing hands realistically as well as in more cartoon form. I’ll attempt to explain the basic anatomy of a hand, things to keep in mind at all times when drawing them and common mistakes and issues that plague many artists when drawing hands.”

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The Structure Of Hand Study

As with drawing anything, it all starts with an understanding of the basic form and structure of your subject matter. Hands are certainly no different. In fact, many of the most common problems with drawing hands stems from incorrect notions of the form of the hand. I’m not a big stickler for memorizing the names of muscles and bones because it seems to zone people out when you start tossing around “Carpal this” and “Metatarsal that”… however labels are something that some people need to be able to apply, so some general surface anatomy with layman’s terms seems to be the best approach. Here is a breakdown of a hand with the important surface elements labeled

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Knuckle Study & Tips

I can sum up the biggest problem most beginners have with drawing hands in one word: 

CURVES. 

For some reason people seem to insist that hands are made up of straight lines.. fingers are parallel to each other (they are not), knuckles line up in a row (no) the edges of the hand are straight and parallel (nope!), Once an artist starts seeing the curves in the hands and thinking of them as flexible objects made of multiple parts, they quickly improve their hand drawings.

FINGERS

Everybody knows (or should) that the fingers are not all the same length. Our naughty middle finger is the longest, and the pointer and ring fingers along side are almost the same length (ring is a little shorter). The pinky is the odd man out, being much shorter. That of course forms a curve along the top of the hand. What is often missed is that arc of that curve is not just a function of the length of the fingers, because the knuckles are also curved. Pinky therefore is not only shorter it’s set farther down into the hand, giving it the double whammy. Ring finger is actually the same length as pointer, but it appears shorter because it’s knuckle is lower on the hand than pointer’s.

Likewise the pads of fingers are not the same size, and the creases that define the separation between the pads are very staggered. Pinky’s first crease (down from the tip) lines up with ring finger’s SECOND crease. The tip of pinky lines up with ring’s FIRST crease.

KNUCKLES

Each finger has three knuckles on the back of the hand. The main knuckle is located at the base of each finger. The two minor knuckles farther up toward the tip. The main knuckle is knobby and has tendons that cross it creating a corded look running up into the finger. The second knuckle is covered with a very circular wrinkled surface, and the smallest final knuckle is indicated with some horizontal creases. You would think the knuckles would line up with the corresponding separations between the pads on the underside of each finger, but you’d be wrong. Curl your pointer finger and look from the side… the second knuckle and the pad crease under it exactly line up. However the smaller upper knuckle is more forward on the finger than the crease below it. That’s nothing compared to the main knuckle. Here is where a lot of people get confused with hands. Open your hand and look at it palm toward you. Look at the base of each finger. Many people think the knuckle of the finger rests directly behind the crease that represents the base of the finger right under the bottom finger pad. Now turn your hand around. That main knuckle is SIGNIFICANTLY lower on the hand. In fact it’s below the upper pad of the palm that curve below all the fingers. A lot more of your finger resides inside the palm/body than you might think. Understanding that is a big part of figuring out hands”

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Thumb Study

The thumb is a shorter, meatier version of the fingers. It has only two knuckles, one of which is hidden when extended. Compared to the fingers the thumb is much more diverse in it’s movements. It has a base that I think of as the meaty part of a chicken drumstick, and that drumstick can rotate inward, across and in circles from the palm. The “drumstick” of the thumb sort of coexists with the thinner drumstick of the outer part of the hand, which is a little like the bottom extension of the pinky. These two larger elements frame the hand and the palm. When drawing the thumb the curved vs. straight lines that define it’s form is important

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Cartoon Eyes Expressions Study

While working at Disney many years ago, we were asked to do a drawing exercise to explore expression using only the eyes. Some of the eyes we drew ended up in The Illusion of Life book. The idea was to see how many variations we could get by changing up brows, eyelids, pupil direction, etc. We were told that the first thing the audience looks for when connecting with a character on the screen are the eyes. Therefore, the eyes needed to clearly convey the thoughts and emotion of the character. This is a fun exercise I thought some of you might like to try.

Tips: 

1.) The left eye doesn't have to do what the right eye is doing. Variation can add life to your expressions. 

2.) Don't think of eyelids as "windshield wipers" or "venetian blinds" mechanically moving over the eye. They are soft fleshy parts that wrap around the eye and can change shape when pushed and pulled by facial muscles.

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How To Draw Hands Masculine & Feminine Art So Nice And Easy Tips

These are some design 101 that I always keep in mind whenever I’m designing hands; mass, shape, and pose.

The basic rule of thumb for mass and shape is, the bulkier and wider the shape; it will appear more masculine. And the longer, leaner, slender the shape; it will appear more feminine. 

Different pose will give masculine/feminine quality. So when I want to make my hand appear more masculine, I think of stereotype of strong big person, like a superhero (hulk, superman, Xena … etc), or Michelangelo’s hand from creation of Adam. And when I’m designing feminine hand, I think of a graceful dancer. Another feminine stereotype pose is having the pinky flares out, like the way English ladies holding their tea cups.

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