Supplementary material: The Metal Hand And You.

Ok so, let’s say this one fucker, and I’m not going to call out names, but his tumblr username rhymes with one of those Gearholder puns Pemmy and others send me sometimes (fuck you guys, btw), is doing @bonmod a hands tutorial, but he fucked up in them, and forgot to mention The Rule of Thumb.
Well, I’m here to fix that mistake >:Y

See, the Rule of Thumb is simple, just don’t draw your thumb too long. Keep it within the palm rectangle. Like you see the purple phalange there? It doesn’t even graze the blue lines mannn, because thumbs don’t do that. Come on try it with your own, I dare you!! >:Y

Also the hand bump still works here, but in reverse, to make your hand wider. Still following the “<<” relation to the thumb’s base, but don’t go too crazy with it, this is just to add a bit of flesh to your wrist bones there.

Ok with that outta the way, another thing:

If you have trouble deciding how long your fingers should be, try doing them straight, and then bend them bone by bone. Again, this requires some tridimensional thinking.

Once you get the Bent Fingerlines™ down, you can give those bones some flesh, either by keeping on sketcin’ or going straight for the lineart like I did.

But whatever you choose to do I suggest you start with the foremost fingers, leaving the ones behind for last, this will help you avoid drawing lines you’ll end up having to erase anyway.

And that’s it I think - .-

Anywaes, going back to work on that arm tutoriol

Continuing with @bonmod​‘s tutoriels, comes part 2/3, the applied hand sciences! :Y

1.- This requieres some degree of tridimensional thinking: Following the steps from the first part, begin with the rectangle, but giving it a spin in the axis of your choice. Then continue with all previous steps, up to drawing the Fingerlines and thumb. A thing to note is that Knucklecircles overlap each other a bit in these, as they are now being done in 3D, and just like they gave width to the fingers in the frontal view of part 1/3, they’ll serve to give volume to the hand in these positions.

• Figure 1.1 shows a ¾ angle kinda deal, with the palm turned to the left. And here we see our first instance of The Hand Bump. Usually it is a copy of the thumb’s base, kinda like doing a “< <”, except it doesn’t connect with its rectangle’s side, it just kinda floats there under the pinky’s Knucklecircle. Speaking of pinky, you’ll notice this time the finger joints are a bit bent, as to give this hand a more natural look. We’ll get to that later.
  
• Figure 1.2 is a peace sign, with the thumb base pointing inward but still connected to the rectangle’s corners. Two of the fingers are completely bent by now, and thus their Fingerlines are shorter.
  
• Figure 1.3 is a palm resting on a surface, so we’re looking at it from above in a kinda isometric view.

2.- Now, for this part I skipped the tip drawing and went straight for the lineart, which you too will be able to do in time. I believe in you, c’mon.

• Figure 2.1 shows the 3D best if I may say so myself, with the bump giving volume to the palm, the fingers being overlapped and that cheeky little tip of the thumb’s base line at the wrist there. Also that line at the base of the fingers? It’s there to show that even index and birdie are being bent at least somewhat at the base joints.
• Figure 2.2 is pretty simple, follow the Knuckle circles’ width for volume, erase the thumb’s base and only keep the falange itself in, adding a thumb bump underneath. yeah.
• Figure 2.3 doesn’t look like much but if you pay enough attentention you’ll see the wrist line connects a bit farther from the palm’s rectangle, because a perfectly flat palm is not real man, you gotta put a limit somewhere if you wanna make immersive character designs ok? If you did do it flat it’d look like some weird glitch took over your art physics and gave everyone hella flexible tendons >:Y

3.- Now for fists, the trick is to give the palm a bit of a stretch. And a squash. Make the rectangle shorter and wider for a cartoony effect to make your punch seem more menacing. But don’t go overboard, it still is a flesh hand, not some inflatable rubber ball. Other than that, it’s the same rules as before: do the Palm Pentagon, then the Knucklecircles, then the Fingerlines, then delete some useless lines like the crossed out ones in the image, then add you thumb and thumb bump. Then lineart it.

In this case, I skipped even doing the Fingerlines. Man I’m such a loose cannon :yc

4.-Now I know what you’re thinking: “But Gear all those steps are to complicated! my characters have hands too smol for all those details, what can I do?” and to you I say: Finger Rhombus. Just do your Palm Pentagon at whatever scale you may want it, then add a rhombus to it instead of doing the Knucklecircles.

In this case I still did the cicrs tho, to show you how to divide your rhombus. That is, you draw your fingers without leaving the rhombus area, letting the overlapping ones cover the ones behind them. And you can also use this tech to do bent fingers like a fist’s. Don’t tho. This is mainly a straight finger technique - .-

Welp, that’s all for today. This subject in particular is way too big man, if there’s a hand gesture you have particular problems with let me know because tackling them all in their entirety is not a good idea.

STAY TUNED FOR THE FINAL TUTORIOL:

3/3 THE ARMS ARMADA OF hARMONY

Ok so @bonmod has commissioned KNOWLEGDE, because you can totally do that if you want. I’m open for such stuff man, y’all just never ask - .-

So what we’re gonna do now is I’m gonna learn you how to HANDS:

1.- Ok let’s kick it off with an open palm. The GearHand Method© starts by doing a rectangle for the palm, then add a triangle for the thumb’s base. The red line is always the same size, since that’s the bone, while green may vary depending on red’s angle.

2.- Now for the fingers. Start by placing your knuckles atop the Palm Pentagon®, you can either use 4 or just 3 depending on your style, I DON’T GIVEA—anyways, try to keep the center of each circle close to the line. As to how big to make them, you let your palm decide that for you, just use your intuition for making them all equal..it. This is what we call <<proportion>>

From the circles, drawl lines from their centers, these will define how long your fingers will be. Try to not go beyond the length of the palm itself. Unless your style involves long fingers I guess.

3.- Time for finger tips. Let’s do a 5′er for this one. Start from the tip, placing a shape at the end of your Fingerlines©, and then joining those to the sides of tehir respective Knucklecircles©. You can give them any shape of form man, curvy, square, pointy, whatever fits your chara. To illustrate, I’ve drawn them all on this hand, one on each finger.

As for the thumb, just remember to do the outside with straight lines and the insides curvy, with the inside line starting at the middle-ish part of the green line from figure 1. Other than that, I got no idea man :D

I’m a sham “orz

4.- Let’s pretend I did the fingers all the same in step 3, so now our hand is good to line. No, don’t detail it anymore. That’s a waste of time, these are sketches man, they’re not supposed to impress anyone. Especially yourself. It’s important to learn when to stop doodling and start gettin serious, to make the final version of your art ù.ú

Line the hand carefully, try not to extend lines between fingers beyond the Knucklecircles©. If you look at your hand right now you’ll notice some flesh there, ending the gap… well you can see both your hands and the image - .-

Now, with these basic steps you can draw hands in any shape and size…well not every shape, they’s always gonna be hand-shaped. They’re hands.

OKAY CLASS 1/3 IS DISMISSED FOR NOW, STAY TUNED FOR THE NEXT ONE: HAND POSES AND BEYOND.

I should be coloring the rest of the kids but instead here I am, thinkin how these 4 would write their own names

I’m a straight up savant at priority management, holy cow = _=

Orphens: now in technicolor ~( - w-)~

Sum grrrls – 3–

Nyeh, I figured hey maybe I can throw out 3 new kids a day for a few days maybe, see where this takes me.

So here’s these two jocks and nerd, now with ages - 2-

~~Parentless OC’s~~

You already know Phil and Emily. Now meet some others ~( - 3-)~

Bro-tip: Disregard how your sketch looks, lineart’s supossed to look better dammit! >:y

And with a WIPpitty-woppitty, the story goes on - .-