drawing hands

Hands. We use them everyday to touch and express ourselves, hold things, feel, and many other things. But when it comes to drawing them, they are pretty tricky for most people. I know that I have always stuggled with their shape, compostition, and for some reason, I always draw them weird... So I'm making this post today to give all the people out there some things that I have felt were helpful to me when attempting to draw these tricky appendages.


Tips for drawing hands:

-Fingers do NOT all end in a straight line across, the middle finger is usually the longest followed by the ring then first then pinky and finally, the thumb.

-When drawing a palm, you must remember that it isn't flat, there are creases and bumps. Take for instance the bump on the palm made by the thumb, that is the main one.

-Wrists are not just staight, they have an area that comes in slightly from the palm of the hand that extends into the arm.

-Fingers have different sections and aren't just lines, they have bends, and not only two, but three!

-The length of the palm is actually the same as the length of the fingers.

My main suggestion though, is to look at your hand (like STUDY it) and just draw what you see from different positions. It is probably one of the best ways to learn.

Drawing Lips

As you way know, we talk so much in our lives, at an average of 16,000 words per day! So in art, mouths should be important too right? In anime, mouths are usually drawn at just lines with almost no lip, but sometimes a small line under the mouth to signify the end of the lower lip. Today I am mostly going to talk about realistic lips.

Tips for drawing lips:

-First decide what kind of lips you want. There are the overbloated lips like Rosie Huntington-Whitley who appeared in the Transformers 3 movie

Or small thin lips, or a more normal sized medium

-Then when drawing these, remember the indent of the lip caused by the philtrum. Many peopl tend to forget this, but it is alos a huge part that makes the shape of the lip.

-When adding color, the original color of the lip is going to be a lot closer to the person's skin tone than you think (unless they are wearing lipstick or gloss).

-Near the edges of the mouth, it is still a dark area because of the overlap of you upper and lower lips, so remember to make that little end dark too!

Here is a video to show you how you can digitally make lips too!

Drawing Hair

So hair is an interesting part of drawing and art because it can be done in so many different styles. The style I usually draw in is manga, and that has a distinctive way to draw hair depending on what look you are going for. For realistic hair (which I am not as skilled at) the way you draw and the way it looks is quite different. For manga hair can be done in blocks, or sections, as I like to think of them. They usually utilize triangles and set shapes to give it more of the cartoon-y manga effect. When drawing realisticly, you have to be more aware of the shape of the hairs, their direction and also about how much hair you are giving the person.

So, some manga tips (they can also be applied to realistic drawing):

-When drawing hair you have to remember the hightlights on the hair. Also you can use highlight placing strategically to give your hair more volume and/or depth.

-Strait hair is not always strait unless it was straitened and then there is no outside force acting upon it, so use wind when you draw or at least the bumps from where the hair hits the shoulders.

-Curly hair has many different types of curles. There can be large loose curles like what is done with a curling iron, small compact curles from naturally curly hair, Shirley Temple curls, and others too. Now each of these look different be it small or large but also the way the light and wind interact with these different types of curls. With large curls it may blow in small strands while small curls will blow the entire curl. So keep that in mind.

-With wavy hair there can be so many ways to play around with this so if you just use light wind and different types of hair types, you can get very interesting/unique looking hair.

So here is a video by a very good american manga artist who shows how to draw a few types of hair styles

Another can be found here

For realistic hair (by the same person as last week's videos)