Yeah, drawing hands is one of the most difficult body parts you can draw, mainly because we can do so much with our hands – express a gesture, hold things, or even just hang them loose.

There are two great tips I can give you regarding this hand drawing challange:

1. You have the best model in front of you – look at your own hand when drawing. You can imagine how helpful it is.
2. Keep trying. Draw hands in any posture you can think of and as many times you can. Eventually you’ll get it right. Promiss.

Drawing hands can be tricky and take some time to master. This time I will not show you my own ‘how-to’ drawings, but a few great examples I found on the web, all about drawing hands. Good luck!

 1. Drawing Hands / Tom Richmond, “‘The Mad Blog”

In this wonderful tutorial Tom Richmond, who’s a gifted illustrator for Mad Magazine, shows some great tips for drawing hands. These tips are not only for cartoon hands, but great in general – he shows the hand parts, proper curves and distances between the fingers, and much more. I love it. Check out Drawing Hands.

2. Arms and Hands Tutorial / Snigom, Devian Art

This one is a short but great tutorial that shows the parts of the hand and arm – and how to ‘build’ a hand from it’s basic parts. I think that the combination of this tutorial with the previous one (from the Mad guy) will make a great single tutorial for understanding the hands stracture.

3. Hands Tutorial / AlexDs1

Wonderful tutorial that shows different postures of cartoon-like hands, with great tips on the way. Another great thing is that each hand drawing includes the basic circle guidlines, which helped draw that posture.

So as said, today I want to share with you a few samples of Max Kostenko great art. You can find even more of his work in his blog. Yeah, it’s in Russian. I don’t speak it either, but thanks to Chrome’s page translation I could understand what’s going on in there (though I mainly look at the art…).

Enjoy :)

Wacky dog:

Check this one out – the stages of creating a great portrait:

Healthy relationship:

Cutest Yoda ever:

Manly men:

Superman:

The exact expression of sneezing – amazing!

Gazing kids – again, the exact expression.. :)

Check out the kids inside the bus:

Peter Griffin from family guy never looked better:

Step 1 – Start drawing the leg

First draw the left side of the leg. Start from the upper thigh and finish with the big toe.  

2 – Add the foot

Next to the big toe draw the 4 smaller toes. I just draw some 4 partial half-circles one next to the other, which do the job quite fine. Now add the back of the foot and ankle. As shown in the image below, I usually draw it bottom up as it’s easier for me to get good proportions this way. I have to admit that the foot I drew here doesn’t have the best proportions, but remember it’s just doodling, and it’s a cartoon after all. I can do whatever I want as long as the general looks reminds you of a human related body part. It’s good enough, don’t be hard of yourselves (or me…).

3 – Draw the rest of the leg

As in drawing the foot, it’s easier for me to draw the back of the leg going bottom up to maintain with good proportions. Of course you can change it and draw from up to bottom – whatever works best for you.

4 – Finnaly, the easy high heel stilletto shoe

So we’ve come to the great moment of adding the high heel shoe. And as promissed, it’s going to be quick and easy to draw this stilletto. First – draw the heel. It’s simply a pointy triangle starting from the ankle and ending in the floor level, right next to the toes or just a bit below it, so that it will be in the same line with the bottom of the shoe. Next, add the bottom of the shoe – just some sort of  rectangle below the toes. Keep in mind that the toes are standing on top of it, so the upper part of the rectangle shouldn’t be drawn. To complete the picture just add the strings that hold the foot inside the shoe – one right on top of the toes, and one in the middle of the foot.

5 – The right leg

he best part is that this specific type of shoe can be drawn in almost the same way for both legs – right and left. To draw the right leg, follow the step above, with a few modifications in the toes department:

After drawing the left side of the left, you end it with the smallest two, instead of the big toe. Than, draw the big two in a small distance to the right of it, and add the right side of the foot and ankle. After drawing all of the above, its easy to simply add the rest of the toes from right to left in the space that you have left between the ‘borderline’ toes. To finish it up, add the heel and the rest of the shoe part in the exact same way you added them to the left leg.

6 – That’s it. Really.

Amazingly simple, eh? Yeah, perhaps not the prettiest shoes ever, but they still count as stillettoes.

Hope you enjoyed this post. Let me know if you find these shoes easy to draw as well. :)

• You can find this tutorial in a single image mode in my new Deviantart page .

I was told more than once that when I draw faces, I mimik the cartoon’s expression while I draw, which is great when drawing a happy girl, but kind of emberassing when drawing a consentrating face that sticks the tongue out of the mouth (the consentration expression, you know).

Anyhow, there’s probably a gazillion of funny faces that’s fun to draw while talking on the phone. I’ll show you one of them – in details. I recommend drawing each step slowly, one step after the other. After a few tries you’ll probably get the hang of it, and you’ll be drawing quicker and better.

• In this tutorial I’m using arrows that shows what is the drawing direction – where to start the line (should be a clear and tidy point) and where to end it (can be a bit more loose)

Step 1 – The nose

I usually start a cartoon doodle without having any idea what I will come out of it. You see, for me – the doodle destiny is decided once the nose is completed. The nose gives the tone and the character for your cartoon, so draw it carefully :)

Here are some simple steps for a small girly nose:

Notice the gap between the nose itself and the nostril.

Step 2 – eye:

The eyes are usually located in both sides of the nose, in the same line where the nose blends with the forhead. In the image below I tried showing you that imagenary blending line – that’s where the eye should be. You should also make sure the eye is not too far and not too close to the profile outline. Since the space between our eyes is usually the size of a single eye, make sure the distance between the eye you draw and that blending line of the nose and the forhead is about half an eye.

Drawing the eye take some tries when you just start drawing, but after a few tried I’m sure you’ll get a good looking eye. In the eye I show in the image below notice the ‘extras’ – the eye isn’t perfect. I always leave some extra line outside the eye outline for eyelashes – the longer, the girlier.

Step 3 – mouth and ear

An ear is realy easy to draw – it’s just a sort of half a circle, with something like a weird ‘X’ in the middle of it. The harder thing is to draw it in the right location so that your cartoon won’t look like an alian. So how do you do that? It’s simple – look in the mirror. Unless you’re really a dumbo, the center of your ear should be located in about the same hight of your  nostrils. Same goes for your cartoon.

Here are the steps for drawing the ear. I always draw this ear for all my cartoon – it only changes its size when in need.

The mouth is a bit trickeir, but you can do it too.

Step 4 – eyebrow, chin and neck

The eyebrow is easy. Just a line above the eye. The higher above it, the more surprised the expression will be. The stronger the angle – the stronger expression too.

Regarding chin and neck – I have a happy little trick for drawing these two: combine them to one line. Yes, on the one hand – the chin provides character and additude to the cartoon, so why give up on it? On the other hand, it does gives character and additude to the cartoon, and if we successded providing these with a great nose and expresive eyes, why taking the risk with changing the entire cartoon character by drawing a non-fitting chin? And any how, it’s just a cartoon. We can do whatever we want. right?

Step 5 – Hair!

With the hair you can go wild! Give your cartoon a wacky hairstyle and make it even crazier than it was. There are only a few basic guidline about drawing the hair to make it look more ‘real’ (as much as a cartoon can) – the hair should start from one point in the back of the head, going to the front and back directions. Also, don’t forget to draw the hair that covers the area next and behind the ear.

Well, that’s it – we’re done! :)

I’ll be happy to read your comments and feedback – If you like this tutorial, I’ll be happy show you some more of my phone-time-doodles, those funny profile face cartoon that have no chin.

C-ya, and keep doodling. :)

To save the avatar you want, just right click on the image and press ‘Save Image As…’, to save it directly on your computer.

Enjoy!

So, for the greenest day of all, and partially for my upcoming birthday (1 month away, close enough..), I decided to create a quick tutorial for drawing a clover leaf. This one is really simple, here it goes:

(I’m not so strong with the leaf parts name, but I think you’ll handle this even without the official names)

1. Draw the little branch that holds the leaf, and than draw 4 semi heart shapes that are coming out from the tip of thie little branch.

Notice that each leaf has a ‘spine’ line starting from it’s bottom and continuing along its middle line. The 4 heart shaped leafs make a square cross with their ‘spines’:

2. Add some nice colors – make sure that the inside (the base of each heart shaped leaf) is darker than the outside.

That’s it. Simple and quick :)