Learn How to Draw Baby Hands!

Drawing baby hands (and children hands to an extent) can be summed up into three parts: creating thick muscles and skin around the fingers, hiding certain bone structures like the knuckles, and increase the fat around the wrists.

The hands of babies also have to be delicate because they usually don’t have the strength to hold anything beyond their own body weight. Either way, this exercise will test your ability to deform the current form of the hand into something we all recognize as a baby’s hand.

The best way is to take a quick look back at the adult hand and see how it compares to the baby’s hands.

Are you ready to star this digital art lesson?

1. Baby Hand Proportions

To start off, I have overlaid a simple sketch on top of the adult proportions to compare.

From this simple diagram, the most important point to get out of it is the thickness of the hand in general. Focus on the overall width and length of the hand.

drawing baby hands

Where to the fingers start? Where do the fingers stop? How does the flow of each joint change if it changes at all? How is the thickness of the wrists compared to the adult hands?

Once you have the simple proportions burned into your memory, the next step is to look at other aspects of drawing baby hands and to study on the actual form attached to the chubby proportions.

2. Skin and muscles

For the most part, you don’t need to focus on muscle and tendon details. This is due to the amount of flesh surrounding the hand.

What you can focus on, however, is to look at a few key points concerning where the joints are. For example, aside from drawing thick fingers, you also need to compress the joint sections with skin creases.

When that happens, you see skin protruding out from the base of the joints.

baby hands

The other factor is to look at where bones are usually found. In the case with the knuckles, it is buried in more skin and the only way to reveal these bones are a set of dimples on either side of the knuckles.

The final point is to look at the wrists. Unlike adult wrists, which reveal the tendons, the wrists of babies are hidden in skin as well. That means you will need to create a thick base with skin creases to show the chubbiness of the wrists.

3. Baby hand foreshortening

As you should already have a good understanding of form and flow from the previous foreshortening lesson, drawing baby hands in perspective should be just as easy.

The key here is to emphasize the round and chubby parts of the fingers extending out from the palm.

Whether if you’re drawing the hands palms up, palms down, or working on the bends of each individual finger, always remember to keep the proportions as consistent as you can.

baby hands

If it’s too difficult to picture, a good suggestion is to simply draw the hand as an adult and then thicken each finger and palm afterwards.

That way, you can get the proper flow and proportions right. Of course, don’t forget to deemphasize certain parts of the hands such as the knuckles and skin creases.

4. Children hands

Once you are comfortable with the hands of a baby, the next logical step is to do a child’s hand. Armed with what you already know about the adult hands and the baby hands, combine both aspects to create the child’s hand.

When the child’s hands begin to grow, the flesh surrounding the fingers will slowly compact as the bones in the fingers grow bigger and longer. At the same time, you still need to focus on hiding crucial bone structures such as the knuckles.

children hands

Basically, you are striking a balance between the adult hands and the baby hands to get the desired result.

In addition, do not forget about the differences between the male and female hands. When you’re hiding bones, there is a tendency that it becomes a female hand. However, you can limit this behavior by simply reducing the amount of tapering towards the ends of each finger.

Plus, you can also round out the fingernails a bit to get the desired feel. So long as you are still taking what you know about drawing baby and adult hands, there are an unlimited amount of variations that you can do!

Keep up the good work!