I've come across several artists recently talking about hands and the drawing thereof. Hands are hard to draw, no two ways about it.
On the other hand (heh), as a cartoonist or, less-than-realistic-artist, we have a lot more leeway in what we can get away with when it comes to hands. (And I'm not talking about a four-or-five-finger discount at the art store).
Anyway, I decided to hack together a quick tutorial on my approach to drawing hands.
First off, this is a great way to draw a fist.
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Okay, this next one is just an open hand. <?php print theme( 'imagecache', 'post_img_640', "sites/botaday.com/files/blogimg/hand_drawn-3.2.png", '', '' ); ?>
Okay one more. Really, just a repeat of the previous. Draw the palm and the finger clump, then the finger lines.
High Five!
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I was fascinated by the funny pages at an early age, and tried hard to draw as well as the cartoonists in the papers.
I remember my first realization that some people where better at hands than others was from Jimmy Hatlo, who used to draw "Little Iodine" and "They'll do it Every Time". I really liked how he would sometimes leave the little finger dangling on a fist. I think that's probably when I realized there were lots of tricks to drawing, and that you could add other people's tricks to your own bag.
Another great one for hands is Jack Davis, of Mad Magazine fame. If you notice, a lot of my hands are influenced by Davis and Mort Drucker, another Mad alumni.
M.K. Brown made me realize that you don't necessarily need to faithfully draw each and every line between fingers (and a lot of things, actually), and sometimes a drawing can be enhanced by the lines you leave out!