Studying Anatomy from Historical Drawings: Hands (Patreon)

After the face, hands are a part of the body that when drawn, strongly reflect the style and sensibilities of the artist. Whilst some artists draw hands full of knuckles and knobbly features, others express them with more elegant sensibilities, with sweeping gestures and minimal shapes. With this variety of approaches in mind, we are going to look at a range of hands with different drawing focuses, and learn how these express anatomy in different ways.

Main Image: Leon Dabo – 'Study of a Hand'

Drawing Through: Gesture and Shape

The complex structure of the hand can seem like an overwhelming challenge in terms of gesture, with each finger having its own pose. However, the hand is still a single unit, and there are limits to the movement of the fingers. 

The connection of the hand and arm is key to the gesture. The sweep of the arm doesn't just stop at the wrist, but continues through the hand, right to the first and second fingers. 

Greuze – 'Study of a Female Arm Dropped Down'  Here I have marked lines of rhythm down the forearm, into the wrist. We can see how the natural asymmetry of the wrist links the hand into the rhythm of the arm.

Rhythm is one tool that helps us deal with the complexity of the hands, but another tool artists use  is shape.

J.C. Leyendecker  

Leyendecker expresses the anatomy of the hand with simplicity, but also is very clear on how the fingers are articulating. Knuckles can get knobbly easily. Here we can see he has use contrasting shape contours to help indicate these features. The upper side of the fingers has sharper corners and clear segmentation, whilst the underside is smooth and has a less complex contour. When seen from above, like on the right, the fingers have a subtle inward curve to a centreline.

Structure and Bones of the Hand

Before looking at the bones in detail, it is worth looking at the hand's structure. 

Raphael – 'Hand of an Apostle'

We can see here that the fingers are of different lengths, but fit into concentric arcs. Even with slight bends in the fingers, the joints fit to this pattern in natural and more relaxed poses. These aren't quite symmetrical – there is a slight tilt to the right, inner side of the hand. We can also see that the palm length is about the same as the middle finger.

Whilst there are a lot of bones in the hand, it is not a complex arrangement. It is useful to understand how the bones of the hand play a role in its large scale forms. The hand itself is mostly bone, with tendons doing most of the work to move the fingers – there are few muscles in the hand, with the muscles driving the tendons being in the forearm.

Albrecht Dürer – 'A Study of Hands'

1. Phalanges 

a. Distal,  b. Middle,  c. Proximal

2. Metacarpals 

Here we can see that the bones for each finger are arranged in pretty much the same way, creating three joints each. The thumb has no middle phalange, and therefore one less joint.

We can also see that the metacarpal bones are not flat, but have a gently curving structure that lets the hand create a 'scoop' shape. This curvature occurs both along each bone, but also across the palm.

Hendrick Goltzius - 'The Artist's Right Hand'

In this detailed study, Goltzius is really emphasising the bone structure in each knuckle. We can also see that between the joints, the bones are lost under the softer forms, as the shaft of the phalanges is narrower than the base and head. This creates a general alternation between 'hard' and 'soft' parts of the finger, marked in red and green.

The Thumb and Soft Forms of the Hand

There aren't many noticeable muscles in the hand, but the most prominent surround the thumb and forefinger. The base of the thumb is much more rounded in form, as we see below, because of this. Remembering the names of these muscles isn't important, but understanding how they overlap will help you fit the thumb to the hand.

Albrecht Dürer – 'The Hand of God'

1. Abductor Pollicis Brevis

2. Adductor Pollicis 

3. Abductor Indicis

We can see here that Dürer has taken care in portraying the overlapping creases between the thumb and forefinger. The forms of the thumb are overlapped by the abductor indicis on the top of the hand, creasing a distinctive crease. On the inner side of the hand, the adductor pollicis starting at the thumb crosses over to the inside of the hand, at an angle to the abductor indicis. This means that the overlaps will switch over on the palm side; on the top of the hand, the mass of the hand overlaps the thumb, whilst on the palm side, the thumb overlaps the mass of the hand. 

Over to You

Often, I see hands studied in close up detail, but very little in other respects. I want to encourage a couple of other approaches, though it is still well worth doing some longer, anatomical studies alongside these shorter ones.

Shape and gesture are closely related in these dynamic hand poses.

The poses of the hands are important, as they are often the second part of the figure we look at, after the face. Employing a range of expressive and varied poses to make hands look more interesting.

These studies are taken from larger drawings, looking at how the shapes of the hand are simplified.

Another useful thing we can learn from artists is how they simplify the hand in full figures. It can be a challenge to draw convincing hands on a full figure, especially if our initial drawing is small. By copying the hands from full figure drawings, we can learn what details the artist sacrificed.

Alphonse Mucha - 'Salon des Cent'

Hendrick Goltzius -'Sheet of Studies with Four Hands'

Ingres - 'Study for Josephine-Eleonore-Marie-Pauline de Galard de Brassac de Bearn, Princesse de Broglie'

Gaetano Gandolfi – 'Studies of hands' 

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This is the sixth blog post in Lancelot's 'Studying anatomy from historical drawings' series, commissioned using money raised here on the Draw Patreon. We have added some extra hand images to this post if you'd like to use them for hand-drawing practice. 

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