Skip to main content

Helping hands in Photoshop

Drawing hands can be quite daunting, since they're often considered to be one of the hardest parts of the human body to illustrate and paint. However, mastering the task of drawing hands is easier than you think. By simplifying the initial sketch of the hands into basic shapes and then working them up into more complex forms, we can make the process a lot easier for you, and this is the first area we'll explore in this tutorial.

We'll use Photoshop's brush tools and dynamic Brushes palette to do our initial sketch and then work it up into a more complex painting. We're going to adopt the style of Pierre Auguste Renoir, the French Impressionist artist. The loose wet-in-wet technique used by Renoir will be applied throughout and we'll also consider skin-tones and form. In addition, we'll use the Layers palette and Blending Modes to help produce some painterly effects.

Click here to download the tutorial for free