The Pivot Points for Hand Sketches!

Creating hand sketches means we have to look at how our own hands move around. While these drawings of hands may seem to have an infinite possibility of movements, we can actually break our it down into four pivot points!

The four pivot points I am referring to is the wrist, the thumb, the fingers, and the palm itself. Through knowing these points and the types of angles that can be reproduced, you will be on your way to drawing hand movements easily.

Of course, I take it that you should already be familiar with the hand proportions and the general structures of the hand before you begin this lesson.

When you're ready, follow along with me in learning the hand motions through hand sketches!

1. The wrist

Instead of drawing all the possibilities of how the wrist can bend and move, we are going to be mostly concerned with the maximum angle of the pivot motions.

For your first hand sketches, start off with an open palm. The back side should be facing you. From there, tilt your hands left and right. You want to focus on the limits of your wrist flexibility.

Then, simply draw what you have observed. Using your index finger as the focal point, what you should have notice is the maximum pivot is less than 45 degrees regardless if you pivot your wrist left or right.

hand sketches

The second type of pivot motion is up and down. From the side, point your palm upwards and then downwards. Observe and draw.

What you will discover is that maximum angle is almost 90 degrees from the part that is facing outwards. Combining these pivot concepts, you can start building ideas on how the wrist moves about.

2. The thumb

The thumb is its own unique feature of the hand not only because it is missing a joint, but it has a larger range of motion than the fingers.

If we are to look at the thumb from a the palm up perspective, we can see just how flexible the thumb can really be. When extended all the way up, it can go to 90 degrees or more depending if you're double jointed or not.

As you flex the thumb down, notice the angle of the joints. No matter how far you flex it, there will always be a 90 degree pivot on each of the thumb joints.

hand sketches

From the side, the range of movements goes to around 45 degrees when you point the thumb down. However, when pointing the thumb up in this view, it does not exceed more than 15 degrees parallel to the back of the hand.

With this in mind, let us move onto the other parts of the hand.

3. The fingers

It's almost impossible to draw hand sketches without knowing how the fingers operate.

Though seemingly similar, the challenger here is to constantly consider the length of each individual finger and applying it with whatever position you decide to draw the hands in.

With your own hands, try to bend the fingers around to see where the maximum pivot points are.

hand sketches

From side to side, it's quite limited. However, if you are bending the fingers upwards and downwards, you will have a lot of motion to work with.

If bending upwards, the maximum angle should be around 45 degrees in these particular hand sketches. If bending downwards, the angle should be around 90 degrees from the horizontal axis.

Other than that, all the individual joints on the finger will also bend a maximum of 90 degrees. When you draw these bends, keep in mind the lengths of each individual finger and make sure the joints flow with one another.

4. The palm

Though closely related to the thumb, the palm acts as its own pivot point for grasping round objects. There are primarily two bending points: the knuckle region and the thumb region.

When you are bending the knuckles, the fingers will collapse onto the rest of the palm. On the other side of things, when you are bending the thumb region, the fingers will have a tendency to collapse together.

Notice that the maximum pivot of the thumb is roughly 45 degrees to the opposite direction.

hand sketches

With these ranges of motion in mind, practice drawing hand sketches with a freehand approach. Imagine your hands pivoting and sketch out what it will look like on your digital canvas.

Then, compare it with your own hands to see how close you are.

In a few of your hand sketches, you should notice the tendency to move into foreshortening. That will be the object of the next lesson. For now, keep practicing and building your artistic foundation!