The Keys to Drawing Foreshortened Hands!

Drawing foreshortened hands is necessary to your progress as a digital painter because the hand positions that you will be painting in the near future on your character will always have some form of foreshortening!

While it looks difficult, a foreshortened hand drawing can be easy as long as you already understand the structure of the hand and the pivot points that were provided in the previous lessons.

In this article, I will be discussing the concept of seeing form and flow and how it will help with drawing foreshortened hands.

Whether it be overlapping fingers or overlooking the underside of the palm, these concepts should help you with deciphering the many different possible hand movements and to paint it in a way that is natural and in perspective.

Let’s get started.

1. Form and flow

One of the best ways for drawing foreshortened hands is to focus on the fingers. Think of the fingers as a set of cylinders that have three breaking points.

In other words, you should be focusing on the circular shapes and breaks in between the cylinders. Make sure that these circles are in perfect perspective as this will help you with defining the space the fingers will be in.

The second important concept is the idea of flow. With the cylinders in place, you want to align it based on the proportions of the fingers and the palm.

In perspective, the circles inside the cylinder will appear to overlap one another as you foreshorten the fingers. Flow just makes it so that the fingers seem to move in a natural manner.

Don’t forget about your planes too as you construct the remaining parts of the hands.

2. Palm up foreshortening

Drawing foreshortened hands when the palm is facing up will help you look for flow easier. This is because of the wrinkles found on the inside palm.

As usual, you start with the fingers by building up those cylinders. Remember to use the planes of the hands as a guideline for palm thickness. From there, continue to build the thumb with circular and cylindrical shapes.

Always keep a conscious awareness of flow and use the grooves of the palm to create a fluid round shape of the entire hand.

For hands that show the inner wrist, just focus on the shape of bulges that come from the thumb, the palm, and the pinky fingers.

In all of the foreshortened drawings, it’s always a good idea to use your own hands for reference to see how proportions will change with each position.

3. Palm down foreshortening

Drawing foreshortened hands from the palm down perspective can be a bit difficult as you may not see the flow lines as easy. Luckily, there is another focal point you should be aware of: the knuckles.

The knuckles will become your new flow lines that you should cater your drawing to. Anytime you don’t see the knuckles forming an arch, you know that the perspective of your hand is not correct.

The other challenge is to make sure that the tendons align properly to the base of the wrists.

As well, since it’s the back of the hand, you should be looking at all the different types of round shapes flowing as you get close to the wrists.

Other than that, drawing the hand in this pose is the same as the previous drawings: outline your finger cylinders and your alignment flow.

Don’t forget the bulge of the knuckles either.

4. Bent fingers

While it is easy to measure and get the proper proportions of straight fingers, it is quite different when the fingers are bent.

The challenger here is to keep track of each bend of the finger and draw it in perspective accordingly.

One of the key things to keep in mind here is that you will not be drawing the palm a lot since the bent fingers will be covering it. Instead, you should use the knuckles to lead into the rest of the hand.

Like usual, your cylinder shapes will help you immensely here.

Another tip is for when the entire finger collapses on itself to form a small square. There is a main focal point in the center where you just draw the crease of the bends coming out from the central point.

Do not forget about flow and make sure all the points of each bent finger smoothly transition into each other correctly.

At this point in time, drawing foreshortened hands should become easier as you combine a little bit of practice with the structure of the hand that you have studied up on.

Keep it up!

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