From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

851 Drawing a highly articulated hand

From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

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851 Drawing a highly articulated hand

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- Hey gang, this is Deke McClelland. Welcome to Deke's Techniques. Today, we will be talking about how to draw hands. Now, many artists express anxiety about drawing hands, which is ironic because hands are what we're drawing with. And they're two of the things that really define us as human beings. Think about it. We walk up, right, we have massive brains, and we have dexterous hands. Who knew we were such an easy equation. But okay, the human hand it is tricky, to draw that is. Five digits, distinctive shape, all kinds of contours and creases, wrinkles, veins, in my case, hair. But see, last week, we traced our hands. So we're halfway there. All we need to do now is fill in the details. I want you to go along with me on this one. Look at your hand, the back of your hand, just draw what you see. Even if you're a non artist, you have a hand you write with and you have this other hand, the model hand. And so really, all you have to do is see if you can make your righty hand Work. All right, just so you have a chance to see it on screen. This is the hand tracing from last week. And this is the more articulated version of the hand drawn from life. In other words, I'm actually looking at my hand as I draw. That's very important, as opposed to drawing a hand the way you think it looks based on your preconceptions. All right, so here I am in Adobe Photoshop Sketch running on an iPad Pro, although you could be using any app or application you like. I'll go ahead and scroll to the top of my project here. And I don't want to make a mess of the original document. So I'll create a copy of it by tapping on the dot dot dot, that ellipses in the top right corner of the screen, and then choosing select documents. And now I'll tap on that second document in which is the one that I want to duplicate. And I'll copy it by clicking on the little plus icon down here at the bottom center of the screen. And that'll go ahead and duplicate the document like so. Now open it just by tapping on it. Now notice because I'm left handed, I say this all the time, but I still want you to know. I've got my layers over on the left side of the screen and my brushes on the right, that's the opposite of the way things are by default. All right, so I'm going to go ahead and create a new layer by tapping on the plus icon over here in the left side of the screen at the top of the layer stack, and I'll choose sketch layer, because after all, I want to sketch on this layer. And then I'll go ahead and select the top brush, which by default is this guy right here, the graphite pencil. Now notice that the color is set to black, and I'm going to set my size which is this top circle right here to 12. And then I'll go ahead and tap the double arrow icon in the top right corner of the screen to hide the interface. And now it's just a matter of once again, drawing your hand as you see it. So, you can take a picture of your hand and then print it out if you like. Or you can just hold your hand still enough in order to draw it. And I'm going to start with the thumbnail, which is actually a little bigger than that. So I'll go ahead and do a two finger drag to the left in order to undo that brushstroke, and I'll try again. So I've got a nice big thumbnail. And then I'll go ahead and draw some wrinkles around the knuckle right here. Now you can draw as many wrinkles as you like, you can make your hand look super aged, if you want to. But generally speaking, the more lines you add, the more realism you're going to get. And that is, of course, an oversimplification, but you can experiment with things to any degree you like. All right, so I'm going to add plenty of wrinkles because I am looking at my own hand. And I'll go ahead and add kind of a knuckle line right there and a few lines as well. And this helps not only to articulate the skin, but the bone details behind the hand as well after all the hand has more bones in it than any part of the body with the possible exception of the feet. I don't know I'm not a medical professional or anything like that. All right, so I'll just go ahead and add some more lines here and a little bit of cross hatching as well. And now I'll switch over to the fingers. And by the way, I am zooming and panning all at the same time, as well as rotating the canvas by two finger dragging. Whereas I'm drawing, if that's not obvious, with an Apple Pencil. So, I'm not really actually drawing this stuff just with my finger, although you could attempt that if you like. You could also be drawing with a stylus incidentally, for example, a stylus associated with the Wacom Tablet. So that's another way to work, if you prefer to work inside Photoshop, for example. And now I'll just draw this kind of bone line right here, which helps to articulate the back of the hand as well. We've got some veins going on, as well as possibly a little more cross hatching as you see right here. So you can add as much or as little shading as you like. I think that's obvious, but I'll just go ahead and give you permission anyway. All right, now I'll move over to my third finger and I'll go ahead and add a fingernail to it. Now, as you can see here, I'm not really articulating the fingernails per se, we are going to do that in a later movie, by the way with color as opposed to lines, but I am trying to add some line definitions. And you can see that I'm also doing a little bit of stylizing in here, in the case of adding the swirls. So, you don't have to do that, you can add your own details as you like. But notice the more detail I add, the more realism we're getting out of this finger. And part of that even though that seems like a little bit of an oversimplification, the reason that this is working so well to our advantage is that I actually traced the fingers from my actual hand. All right, so I'll go ahead and draw this fingernail over here for the ring finger. And I'll draw a couple of other details. And I might want to articulate this kind of edge right here. So I'll go ahead and take it down and add a little cross hatching if you will. And now I'll twirl around. Incidentally, if you get that effect, see how the beginning of the stroke is very thick. That's because I tilted my stylus too far, I don't want that. So I'm going to do a two finger drag to the left in order to undo that stroke. And I'll just go ahead and redraw it with the stylus at a little less of an angle that is, I'm holding my Apple Pencil as upright as I can, while still managing to get some highly articulated lines. All right, I'm going to do another two finger drag and add a pinky finger nail right there and a little bit of line like so. Few other lines coming off here and I want a little bit of knuckle action. This time, I'm going to try something different than a swirl, just for the sake of variety if you will, and I'll go ahead and articulate the bone line right there, along with a few other lines. Now notice that so far I haven't drawn really much in the way of fist knuckles, that is to say this knuckle right here, for example. So I'll go ahead and add that guy in on a third finger. You may have seen that. And then I'll go ahead and draw down from the pinky line like so, maybe add a couple of additional folds right there. And we'll go ahead and take that guy down. I don't want it to be that thick, however. So I'll undo that brushstroke, I'm trying to do a two finger drag, but at first, I ended up moving the canvas a little bit, which is fine. I'm just panning on screen, I'm not actually doing any damage that way. And now I'll draw another line like so, maybe an additional guy beside it and add a little bit of wrist action as well. All right, I'll center my zoom with a quick two finger pinch. And I'll just go ahead and add a couple of more lines to the index finger there. All right, now let's say that I want to zoom in on the thumb. And I'm not really happy with this action over here, I want the thumb to be lumpier. So, I'll go ahead and undo that brushstroke. Obviously I don't want it. And I'll bring back my interface by tapping that icon in the top right corner. And I'll switch to the next layer down, which contains the original hand tracing and you can see that the case if I double tap on the thumbnail that hides the layer like so. And then double tapping again brings it back, I'm going to tap on this checkerboard pattern at the bottom of the tool list, in my case on the right hand side to switch to the eraser. And I'll just go ahead and erase this stuff right here away, maybe erase down into this line as well, just to taper it a little bit. And now, I'll switch back to my graphite pen up here at the top of the tool list. I'll switch back to the other sketch layer, the one that contains all this detail right here. And now I'll just go ahead and add some folds like so. And again, I'm drawing these folds based on what I'm seeing in my very own hand. And that way we get a little more realistic detail. Then I'll go ahead and add a line at that location as well. All right, that's it. So, now I'll just go ahead and do a brisk two finger pinch in order to center my zoom. And I'll tap the double arrow icon in the top right corner in order to hide the interface. And that's how you draw a highly articulated hand based on your actual hand, which you're viewing with your actual eyeballs. In my case inside Adobe Photoshop Sketch running on an iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil. If you're a member of LinkedIn Learning, I have two, count them on your hand fingers, two follow up movies. In the first I'll show you how to color your hand. It's a little bit of work but totally doable. And in the second, the fingernails should be lighter than the surrounding skin like so. Which is when we learn about such terms as cuticle, you knew that one right? But how about lunula or this guy distal edge? Bet you've heard of this next one, dirt. Oh, we have fun even with fingernails, Deke's Techniques each and every week. Keep watching.

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