How to Draw HANDS and FEET

In the previous video on how to draw using simple shapes, a bunch of you guys wanted to see a more detailed step-by-step breakdown of the construction process. So in this video, I'm going to show you three more examples. Here's the first one. I want you to try pausing the video for a few minutes and try to find major shapes that make up the feet. Remember that there isn't one right way to do this. For me, I think the feet fit nicely into a large triangle, but you might see a trapezoid or something like this instead. The idea is to use shapes that work for you. I'm placing this triangle where I want it on my page. If it's not centered, I can easily and quickly erase it and move it elsewhere. I drew a line down the center to mark the gap between the feet. To check the angle of the right and left side of your triangle for accuracy, put your pencil up in front of your image, matching the angle that you want to check, and then slide it over to your drawing. If you're off by a few degrees, just erase and try it again. I'm just going to estimate the rest of the drawing to save some time because these clips take a lot of time to edit. What other shapes do you see? I think the ankle joints can be represented using circles. I'm marking how big I want each circle to be. Then I'm drawing just a rough circle. Doesn't have to be perfect. You can of course go all out and measure and compare every part of your reference against your drawing to get it to match up exactly. If you can't draw directly on your reference image, you can brainstorm the shape combinations on your sketchbook and arrange them as best as you can. I'll just roughly draw the legs, but you can do it more accurately by checking the angles using the side of your pencil, like I did earlier. Okay, now once you're confident with overall shape of your subject, let's zoom into the more detailed areas. You can use straight vertical or horizontal lines to help you know where elements of your drawing should be aligned on the page. For example, let's find out where to draw each big toe. We already know that they kind of touch near the center between the two feet. For the other side of each toe, you can draw a straight vertical line upward and see where it aligns with the rest of the reference photo. Seems like the left one is aligned to the center of the ankle joint, whereas the right one is slightly off-center. Now instead of drawing on top of your reference image, you can hold your pencil up in front of you, making sure it's perfectly vertical so that you can make these observations. Let's use the information that we just gained to draw the two largest toes. I'm going to draw ovals for each toe. The feet curve a little around the outer sides, so I'm going to trim the bottom of the triangle to try and match that curve. Now I'm going to quickly guess the placement for all the other toes and draw them as circles and ovals. But you can more accurately place each toe by making several measurements and comparisons. For example, if you measure the biggest toe and use it as a unit of measurement, you'll find that the third, fourth, and fifth toes together are equal to one big toe. The second toe on its own seems to be two-thirds the size. You can also check your toe placement by drawing a vertical line upwards like we did earlier. You'll see that the second toe juts out to the right a little more than the outer ankle does. You can continue to carefully construct the guidelines for the rest of your foot, measuring, comparing the angles, etc., until you're happy with how it looks. Then use light strokes to define your subject. I'm drawing really dark right now so you can see, but you'll want to draw lightly so that you can erase it more easily. I'm just going to quickly finish it so we can move on to the next example, but if you're drawing along with this video, feel free to pause it and check the angle for each toe, compare the size of each toenail, etc., whatever amount of detail that you want to go down to. By the way, I'm Darlene and you're watching a Rapid Fire Art tutorial. Let's try simplifying another challenging subject. It's easy to feel frustrated when drawing hands and feet, but give yourself a few minutes and trust that you can figure it out. For this image, I see a triangle right here. The negative space under the index finger also seems to form a triangle. I see a four-sided shape here that touches the knuckles. There's another triangle here, some ovals for the fingertips, and the rest of the hand and wrist form these long, almost rectangular shapes. So actually, if you want to draw more realistically, you'll want to use three-dimensional shapes, which is a topic that I'll cover in the next video, but for now, just train your brain to see simple 2D shapes everywhere you look because it's going to help you simplify everything you see in the world, which will help you draw more easily. Time to translate all of these shapes to our sketchbooks. I'll start with a triangle that encompasses the index finger, giving it my best guess. As you go along, check that your angles are accurate, like we did earlier. To check whether the shape that I just drew is the right length, I'm going to check my reference photo to see how the length compares to the length of the index finger. Now checking my drawing, I think it's close enough for me. You can check to see how wide each of these three fingers are by comparing them against each other. It will help to inform you on how much space you should allocate for each finger when you split this section into three. Once you're confident with how your biggest shapes are positioned, angled, and sized, you can move on to smaller shapes and then the details. I hope that you're getting the hang of this now. I'll quickly speed through the rest and move on to the next example. You can spend even more time measuring and comparing the fingers and check their angles to achieve the level of accuracy that you desire. Before I get to the next example, I want to introduce to you the sponsor for this video, which is Skillshare. Skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of inspiring classes for creative and curious people. You can find topics like illustration, animation, fine art, and more. Explore new skills, deepen existing passions, and get lost in creativity. A fun class I really enjoy is Mastering Illustration, Sketching, Inking, and Color Essentials by Jazza, or Jazza Brooks. He takes us through his process creating original characters and scenes. Being able to see and hear him explain his thought process and why he makes certain creative decisions is very valuable. I love his idea of sketching even our doubts or questions because it's a really great way to help explore ideas. Skillshare classes include a combination of video lessons and a class project where you can submit your work. I love that I can see all the creative work that other people have submitted. Skillshare is curated specifically for learning, so there's no ads and they're always launching new premium classes so you can stay focused and let your creativity lead you. For a very limited time, the first 1000 of my subscribers to click the link in the description will get a one month free trial of Skillshare, so you can start exploring your creativity today. Alright, let's get back to the tutorial. Now I'm quite excited for this example because it looks complicated but it can be broken down easily. So what shapes do you see here? Try to ignore all the small details. I think all four hands form a square and then each hand is made up of two pretty simple looking shapes. You can even observe the negative space around the subject which form triangles and there's a diamond shape in the very center. I hope that simplifies the reference image in your mind and makes it feel a little less intimidating to draw. Now once you have your first shape down, check the angle of all four sides to see if it's accurate. You can also check the angle from one corner of your shape to the other. Now we need to figure out where inside of the square to draw each hand. Pause the video and brainstorm a few ways that you could do this. I'm going to make a little mark along each side of the square between each person's hand. For the first two sides, it's about halfway but for the last two sides, it's off-center. I'm just eyeing this right now but you can measure the spaces and compare them against each other for higher accuracy. If you want to double check your measurements, you can draw a line from the edge of each hand to see what kind of angle it forms. Now I'm going to draw each hand using the tick marks as my boundary lines. I'm just guessing right now but if you want to be more accurate, you can measure and compare the two shapes that make up each and every hand and see how much bigger one is compared to the other. Then you'll have a better idea of how big to draw each of the shapes. Try to make as many observations as you can. The more time you spend measuring, comparing, and observing, the more accurate your drawing will be. Remember the diamond of negative space we saw in the very center? You can use it to check how accurate your drawing is and mine is quite off. It looks more squished but I'm just going to go ahead and continue drawing because this video is going to take forever to edit if I spend too long. I really want to get more content out for you guys. I just feel so bad that you have to wait months between each video and my perfectionism is partly to blame. Now I'm drawing the arms, making sure I visualize the covered wrist as well so that each person's arm doesn't look like it's dislocated from their own hand. As you draw each arm, also pay attention to the negative space around it to improve your line placement. Then I'm splitting the fingered area of each hand into four spaces. The pinkies should get the least amount of space but I actually messed up for one of the hands. Check the angle of each finger if you want to be more accurate with your strokes. Once you have all these shapes in place and you're confident with them, try to make more detailed observations. Notice how the knuckles create a curved shape instead of a straight one and how the webbing between each finger forms a deeper curve but every hand is different. Notice how the middle finger is longer than the others and the overall curve that the fingers form. So when you're in the construction phase of your drawing, you want to be able to look at the big picture, the large shapes that make up your subject, as well as the negative space around it. Then once you're confident with the large shapes, you can move on to the smaller shapes and details. Then once you're confident with those, you can move on to drawing strokes that more closely define your subject. So I hope you guys found this tutorial helpful. If you want to see more breakdowns like this, let me know in the comments and give this video a thumbs up. Don't forget to check out the link in the description. The first 1000 of my subscribers to click the link will get a one month free trial of Skillshare. If you enjoyed this video, please subscribe and hit the bell so you'll never miss the next video. Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next one.