Drawing Hands

How to Draw Hands for Beginners

"What my brain keeps telling me to draw" meme

One of the subjects my students struggle with the most are drawing hands. I teach a Drawing and Painting class with mostly 9th and 10th grade students and this year I wanted to start with hands as a way to build confidence. 
The idea is to give them the opportunity to improve their skills with a subject they find  the most challenging- I often hear students say "hands are too hard to draw" and so if they learn to draw hands, or even improve they are going into the next project with a higher degree of confidence in their skills. 
The meme above is one that always makes my students laugh and I show it at the start of this lesson as a way to "clear the air" and recognize how difficult it is to draw hands, and to illustrate the idea that it is our familiarity with hands that adds challenge to drawing them since we think we know what they look like and rely on those mental images, rather than direct observation. ​

A page from Drawing the Head and Hands by Andrew Loomis, 1949

I’ve found that it is difficult for beginners when most books dive straight into complicated anatomy. For beginners, that much detail isn’t always helpful—I've also found that many books just show pages full of beautifully drawn hands without much explanation.  Over the years, I've found ways to simplify the process by focusing on the basic shapes that make up the hand and using contour drawing to capture its form. Instead of worrying about every bone and muscle, we’ll break the hand down into easier parts like rectangles, ovals, and arcs to create a foundation. This method is perfect for middle and high school students who are just starting and want to build confidence in drawing hands step by step

Hand Contour Drawing Practice

The first part of the unit focuses on Contour Drawing activities, a classic technique used in beginning drawing classes to encourage active observation. Contour drawing, derived from the French word for "outline," involves using only lines to capture the edges of a subject. This method helps students focus more on the subject itself rather than on what appears on the paper.

Contour Drawing Exercises

With familiar subjects like hands, it's easy to rely on our mental image rather than truly observing what's in front of us. Contour drawing, particularly exercises that limit how much we look at the paper, challenges students to engage with the subject instead of their preconceived ideas. The first activity in this unit is a Pure Contour drawing, where students are not allowed to look at the paper at all and must concentrate fully on the subject. This technique is sometimes called “Blind” Contour, but I prefer the term “Pure” because it emphasizes pure observation without worrying about accuracy on the page.
Maintaining focus during Pure Contour drawing can be challenging for students. I find that setting a timer or playing a song helps keep them engaged for the full three minutes. While some teachers hide the drawing by covering the pencil with a piece of paper, I allow students to choose whether to fully commit to the exercise. It's easy to spot when a student has peeked at their work.
 Pure Contour drawing s are unique because of their distortions. When students lift their pencils and place them back without looking, lines often land in the wrong spots, and the scale can shift as they “zoom in” and “zoom out” during observation. Although these drawings can be visually intriguing, the true goal is to let go of expectations and learn to fully observe the subject.

Next, we move on to Continuous Line contour drawings, where students can look at their paper but cannot lift their drawing tool, creating a single, unbroken line. I encourage students to use markers instead of pencils for this exercise, as markers glide more smoothly on the paper. While they are allowed to look at their paper, I remind them to spend less than 20% of their time doing so and emphasize that all the information about the subject comes from observation, not the paper.
After these two warm-up exercises, students practice regular Contour Line drawings, where they can look at the paper and lift their pencil. However, I often notice that students become more hesitant during this activity, making less fluid and confident marks. To counter this and reduce reliance on erasers, I sometimes require students to complete at least one drawing in marker. This helps them commit to their marks and focus on observation rather than perfection.

How to Draw Hands Step-by-Step

On the second day of the lesson, we focus on a strategy I call “finding shapes and arcs,” which I have found to be an effective step-by-step method for learning how to draw hands. This approach helps students break down the complexity of the hand by identifying simple shapes such as rectangles, circles, and ovals, while also analyzing the hand for repeating arc shapes. We begin with an open-palm drawing activity where students draw their own hand from life. Although drawing from life can be more challenging than using a photograph, it provides valuable practice in observation and proportion.
Before students begin, I demonstrate the technique in detail using a document camera, guiding them step by step through the process. After students sketch the basic shapes and arcs, they move on to adding contour lines, building on the skills they practiced in the previous lesson.

Drawing Hands Worksheet

​Next, students practice the technique of finding shapes and arcs more independently using a drawing worksheet. One side of the worksheet shows hand references with the simple shapes outlined step by step to guide them. This allows students to work independently and gain confidence as they achieve more realistic results. The how to draw hand poses featured on the worksheet—a closed fist and a forefinger “one” sign—are more challenging than the open palm drawing, providing a good opportunity to build on the previous activity.

Front side of the hands drawing worksheet, click to see the full worksheet.

The other side of the worksheet offers an additional challenge, featuring a photo reference of a hand for students to analyze and find shapes on their own. I typically demonstrate how I identify shapes in the reference image and use them to sketch the hand proportionally. However, I encourage students to trust themselves in finding the shapes, even if their interpretations look different from mine—that’s all part of the learning process.

Back side of the Drawing Hands worksheet, click the image to see the full lesson

Drawing Hands Realistically

The final activity in this lesson brings together everything students have learned, focusing on how to draw hands realistically using shapes and arcs, contour lines, and shading. Students select a hand reference image from a pre-printed selection in black and white, which simplifies identifying values for shading.
Using a reference image allows students to draw the simple shapes directly on the photo to guide their sketching. It also provides a stable lighting situation, enabling them to work on their drawings over several days. By this point in the lesson, students have gained the confidence to apply these strategies independently, creating beautifully realistic hand drawings.

Hand Reference Images

One of my favorite sources for copyright-free reference images, usable both creatively and commercially, is Pexels.com. The site offers a wide variety of hand images in different poses and perspectives. I like to select a range of images, from more familiar poses like an open palm or fist, which we’ve already practiced, to more challenging ones, such as a foreshortened hand. I encourage my students to "choose their own adventure" based on their experience level and how much challenge they want in their drawing.

This Drawing Hands lesson was successful with my students because it broke down the process of drawing hands into simple, approachable steps. Every student created at least one drawing they were proud of, and most importantly, they reported feeling less intimidated by the challenge of drawing hands. While students could benefit from exploring hand anatomy and proportions in greater depth, as seen in traditional drawing books, this lesson served as an excellent starting point for how to draw hands for beginners.