AN ARTIST'S GUIDE TO HANDS

AN ARTIST'S GUIDE TO HANDS

No, sorry it's actually not an artist's guide to drawing hands. Those are just warmup studies (which I'll talk about in this post.)

This is a guide to Your Hands and how to take care of them when making art.

No one ever sits down and teaches artists how to take care of their hands. They didn’t even teach me this while I was in art college. This is just what I've learned myself through years of pain and scouring the internet for advice.

This is going to be a long one and geared towards illustrative traditional/digital/pen/pencil artists specifically, but artists of other mediums and crafts should take care of their hands too! Well, we all should take care of our bodies in general, but this is about hands.

(advice is below the read more)

First off I'm not a professional or anyone with actual medical advice. I'm just some guy with chronic hand pain who makes art. This advice is free for you to use or discard.

WARMUPS!

Ever sit down in the morning to draw and wonder why your art is so stiff and looks so much worse than what you were drawing last night? It's because you didn't warm up!

You know how for physical sports they all warmup and do stretches before getting into the actual sport. To prevent injuries and all that? Yeah, it's good to do that for art too.

One way to warmup is to just draw lines. Try to keep them as straight as you can. Going up and down and diagonal. Draw squares. Big squares. Small squares. Circles! You are warming up, keep it loose and relaxed! Basically just scribble away.

(examples. I usually keep going until there is no paper white left. This can double as practice for drawing straight lines without a ruler, which is a great skill to have when freehand city drawing.)

Before hopping right into drawing people you can try doing some quick gesture drawings. Line of Action has timed sessions with a large variety of clothed or nude models. I usually do the 30 min class as it has a nice balance of short and long timed poses. The point isn't to draw nice art, but to warm up. Try to get the basic form down, not the details. I find that doing a full class session can really help my drawings feel more loose and grounded in reality for the rest of the day.

Some examples I found in my folders. I suggest looking into what a line of action (not the site) is and giving it a try with some of the studies!

COOLDOWNS!

For sports it's to return your body back to your everyday baseline after a workout.

Example; you are working on a big project! A masterpiece! It's detailed and cool! You have been focusing on this for hours and drawing so intensely. But you need to stop working for the day.

A cooldown is for winding down out of the go go go mindset. Put away the big project and do a couple small doodles and sketches. You are relaxing your hand and letting it stretch out. Keep the sketches loose. Let the art happen slowly. Don't polish anything, that can happen another day. Just ease yourself out of drawing.

...

Cool! Now we get into the meat of this thing.

HAND PAIN

How to avoid it and how to manage it if you already have it.

I love you artists and creatives, I am begging you to please take care of your most important creative tools. I really don't want this to sound like scare tactics like "oooh you better do this or blah blah!" Nope. I just had to learn all this the hard way and I'm extremely passionate about it.

Take this advice or don’t ╮(ﾟ～ﾟ;)╭ I can't tell you what to do, I'm not your dad

Adjustments and Small Solutions

If you are feeling physical discomfort while drawing there are many different solutions to try! Here are some suggestions that may or may not work for you.

Hold your pencil more loosely. Stop gripping that thang so tightly!!! Relax that hand! They make these… squishy pen grip things... I think they are called Adaptive Pencil Grips or Adaptive Writing/Drawing Aids? They stop your hand from being all cramped up by making your drawing tool wider. It's going to take a bit of time to adjust to drawing with it, but it's worth it for those who hold pencils too tightly.

Don't press as heavily. For traditional art, if you find yourself pressing really hard to get darker lines try moving to a softer pencil. Most standard pencils are HB, the B pencils have softer graphite. Experiment until you find the right one for you. For Digital, adjust your pressure settings so you don't have to press as hard to get thicker lines. You should not be pressing so hard all the time, it wears out both your hand and your tablet! It takes a bit of time to adapt to pencil or pressure changes. Try doing some unimportant sketches, they don't have to be good. You are just training your hand and mind to adjust using less pressure.

Draw with your arm and not your wrist! It's small repetitive motions that cause the most strain. You probably hear this one a lot, what does it even mean? It means moving your arm with the motions of your line, and trying not to make too many tiny movements with your just your fingers or wrist. This one is hard! It takes time and conscious thought to change the habit. Tips? Work bigger. Zoom in more. Use bigger sheets of paper.

(Motions exaggerated for a clearer example)

Change the angle of your drawing surface. They make angled tablet holders, angled desks, angled desktop raisers. Experiment, find and angle that is comfortable and the one that causes the least pain. (It's also good to make sure you don't have to hold your head at an uncomfortable angle when drawing. Staring straight down or hunching over a paper flat on the table can cause pain!)

Compression Glove? Wrist brace/tensioners? Some folks use them and I've been thinking of getting one for years now. I can't give advice on this one, because I don't have experience with it. Look into it if you want!

Managing Pain

First things first.

IF YOUR HANDS START TO HURT WHILE YOU ARE DRAWING. STOP! Put the pencil/pen/paintbrush/whatever down. The art will still be there for you to continue tomorrow.

I know from experience that it's extremely hard to pull away when you are hyper focused on an art piece. It's hard to remember all sorts of basic needs like food or bathroom when hyper focused. But you Need to stop when you feel that pain. (Preferably even before the pain…)

Take Breaks! Let your hands rest when you can. Just like a machine, if you don't schedule maintenance, the machine will schedule maintenance for you. Often that means having to wait a few days for it to return to functional. Best to take a day off from heavy usage or take an occasional 30 min break throughout the day to let your hands rest.

Stretching is important! Full body stretches are good; your arms, shoulders, neck, and spine are all connected, but I'm specifically talking about HAND and wrist stretching. There are a lot of stretches and massages for carpal tunnel and arthritis out there. I find they work for hand pain in general. Move into and out of each stretch slowly. Do not push a stretch if it hurts!! Be gentle!!

I am not a qualified professional and I will not be giving out specific stretches (that is beyond my personal comfort level). There are other artists out there who have made helpful stretching info-graphics which are cool, but I will not be because i don't want to be responsible for someone accidentally hurting themself. Ask your doctor for stretches & advice or look some up on your own.

Don't feel bad about forgetting to stretch frequently! Of course it is good to do it regularly and frequently, but I would be a hypocrite if I said that I remember to stretch daily. Setting timers for stop and stretch sessions can work for some people, but also doing stretches whenever you remember is fine! If you are sitting on the toilet you can idly do some hand stretches. On the bus? Laying in bed? At the beach? Do a couple stretches! Even just once a week is better than… nonce a week.

Using Cold or Heat to treat pain. If you really overdid it, put your hands in some cold water or wrap a cloth around an ice pack and apply it to your hand. Cold works best for me, but warmth works for others. This is just pain reduction and reducing inflammation from overuse! This is not a permanent solution.

If your hand hurts a lot! Frequently! Talk to your doctor? Idk mine has never given real advice. Just gently poked my hand and told me there isn't much to be done about it :/ but there are really good doctors out there who will care and give helpful advice!

Again. IF IT HURTS TO CONTINUE DRAWING. STOP DRAWING! This is not a "no pain no gain" type situation. Drawing so much that you hurt yourself isn't noble, it's just… limiting yourself. You only get one set of hands. These things are very handy to have.

Other Advice

Things I couldn't figure out how to fit into the earlier sections.

Your other hand can't handle the strain! Lets say you hurt your drawing hand... the other hand is right there free to use for art. Right? Wrong. Your other hand can't keep up with the demand, it hasn't been trained to the same extent as your dominant hand, it does not have the built up muscle. If you want to use that hand for drawing you are going to have to use it s l o w l y and train it bit by bit over a long period of time. When I tore a tendon in my right hand I decided to just keep drawing with my left and I got Really Good at it. It only took like two months before my left hand hurt too much to move. Then I had 0 functioning hands to pull up my pants. Not fun!!

People who draw on phones. That is extremely impressive! I'm amazed by the things people can create on such a small space. But phone artists are the ones I see most frequently mentioning hand pain. please please please make sure you are taking breaks. Would a stylus work instead of using a finger?

Outside of Drawing. Sometimes it's things outside of drawing that are causing the pain. For me there are multiple sources, but I also have tiny baby hands. Holding a phone too long causes pain. The handheld mode for my Switch causes A Lot of pain. The way my hand rests while typing on my laptop hurts! Playing tense videogames for too long hurts! Find the source of your pain and make some changes. The same things will apply to most; take regular breaks, do some stretches, and find soft things to prop up or rest your arms on.

Change your Artstyle. This one is more of a last resort. You might have to change your art style if you are getting sharp pains every time you draw. I loved drawing tight clean lines and many small fancy details, but drawing like that left me in so much pain at the end of the day. In 2023 I had to take the better part of year off from illustrations just to learn how to sketch and draw more loosely. I had to learn how to be gentle. To stop gripping my pencil so tightly. Learn! Adapt! You might discover a new style that you love even more!

A lot of this stuff gets more complicated in a work setting where you have to draw fast and long in order to get paid. Things like reducing your workload can help, but that can be... financially rough. But outside of that, it’s ok to be a slow artist. Going full steam and hurting yourself is not worth it.

Aaaaaanyway, thats all folks. Today's rant brought to you by me! The guy with chronic hand pain who always forgets to stretch! The guy who got frustrated with a sketch yesterday and decided to push to keep drawing for just one more hour! The guy who woke up this morning and had to spend 2 hours massaging and stretching their hands. The guy who probably shouldn't have typed all of this out because ooww ow ouch

If your hands do hurt, it's going to be ok! You don't need to be a speed demon who draws all the time. It's ok to take your time and take frequent breaks. You are going to do great things! Just be gentle with yourself...