Learn How to Draw Elderly Hands!

The techniques of drawing elderly hands involve emphasizing the anatomy underneath the skin. That is, while you were hiding parts of bone and muscle under flesh when drawing the baby hands, this is the complete opposite.

In this lesson, do not try to clean up your line drawings too much. My suggestion is to keep most of the rough sketch lines available to be incorporated as a means to form wrinkles, skin, etc. You want to show as much form as possible.

What do I mean by this? Well, let’s start with a quick sketch of the hand. Certain things to keep track of throughout this exercise is keeping the skeletal system of the hands as noticeable as possible, depicting tendons, and wrinkles caused by contracting muscles.

1. Aged hands: the simple sketch

Like all things we have learned, drawing elderly hands being with just a simple gesture sketch. With your digital art program, begin sketching out the form of the hands.

Concentrate on areas of proportions flow of each finger. How does it flow to the wrist? How is the thumb attached to the rest of the palm? What key bone features must be sticking out?

elderly hands

The simple sketch I have drawn out lets me focus on the overall form before I begin painting the smaller details. Always begin with this step so you have a good guideline to work with.

2. Skinning

This next step involves chiseling out the finer details in drawing aged hands. With your digital brush, begin painting out parts of bone and tendons.

This can be done simply by using white or a lighter color than what you used to do your simple sketch. Here, you should focus on the knuckles primarily and how it will connect from the fingers down to the wrists.

elderly hands

It will be a good idea to start on a few wrinkles as well. Begin painting sets of wrinkles around each joint in the finger. Paint over excessive sketch lines to help you form additional wrinkles and tendons.

Remind yourself to not go overboard with clearing all the sketch lines as you still need them for fine details.

3. How to Draw shading

While the details are still rough, here’s where you need to look at shadowing and light sources. I suggest using a flat chalk brush to paint in the shadows.

Depending on where your light source is, certain parts of the finger will be highlighted while other parts are not. Focus on these crevices where light can hide.

elderly hands

My suggestion is to use your own hands and look at how the light will hit each individual finger when being shined on by a light source. Rotate your hands accordingly and note the changes.

As well, depending on a bit of foreshortening of the fingers, you may need to add in additional shadows to that entire finger.

When you’re done with this step…

4. More details through hand wrinkles

You are almost there! This last step in drawing elderly hands involves detailing a few blood vessels and bones in the joint.

For the majority of this step, you will be painting strands of blood vessels flowing from the knuckles, down to the wrists, and to the rest of the arm.

Whatever sketch lines that you haven’t erased up to this point, use it as an opportunity to create additional wrinkles in the skin.

elderly hands

Once you are satisfied with the details, you can start using your eraser tool and refine the entire hand. Concentrate on erasing sketch boundaries between each joint of the fingers. Your goal is to emphasize the bones in the joints.

Repeat this for the entire part of the hands that contains noticeable bone structures such as the wrists and tips of the fingernails.

I hope you enjoyed this lesson on drawng hands which are aged. Remember to keep motivated and practicing!