How to Draw a Fist Easy: Step by Step Guides For Draw Clenched Fists

Any artist will tell you that learning to draw hands is one of the hardest skills to learn. However, with enough practice, it is definitely a skill that you can master with ease. I know that when I was just starting out, hands were a nuisance that was next to impossible. I would try anything to avoid drawing them – but that wasn’t going to make me any better as an artist. It took some force, but the more I drew hands, the easier that it became for me to draw hands.

Like all things, progress won’t be instantaneous. It will take time and effort to perfect drawing hands. Also like all learned skills, it is often easier to take the lessons step by step and slowly expand into more complex hand positions. It’s a saying that’s tired but true: the more that you practice, the better that you will be at drawing hands. I find that the easiest way to start drawing hands is to learn how to draw a fist.

What You Will Need For This Tutorial

References − Whether you stare at your own fist or a variety of photos of fists of other people, a reference is the number one tool for learning the lines of hands. You can see exactly how the fingers curl when the fist is clenched and better replicate the image in your own drawing. References are a handy tool for many things in art, but particularly in drawing hands in my opinion. While your own hand will get you very far in terms of references, it is also important to have a few pictures on hand in the hopes of avoiding the chance that your brain gets confused and wants you to draw a replica of your non-drawing hand in the opposite place of where it should go. Even the best artist will sometimes fall victim to human error.

Drawing Materials − The exact materials that you will need will end up varying according to the medium you prefer using when you draw. I recommend starting simple and learning the basic lines and shading of the hand. Pastels, paints, gouache, and colored pencils are things that you can work in later, once you feel more confident in how you draw hands and fists. It can also be tempting to use color to disguise some smaller mistakes when drawing, so to get the maximum benefit from this tutorial I recommend holding off on all embellishment beyond shading. I personally alternate between drawing digitally and drawing in a more ‘traditional’ manner.

Traditional

Traditional art is often considered drawing on paper with a pencil or some other form of media. This is probably the easiest material set to get your hands on because all you will need is a sheet of paper and a pencil. The type of paper and pencil is entirely up to you. Whether you choose to go with more artistically skewed brands or with whatever you happen to find laying around the house, traditional paper and pencil art are one of the most common styles to learn in.

Materials You Will Need For Traditional Drawing

Paper
Pencil
Eraser

Drawing Surface

Strathmore 400 Series Sketch Paper

Fine tooth surface grabs dry media and stands up to repeated erasures and reworking
Heavy chipboard backing

Check Price

You can find here examples of paper that works well for both pencils and markers.

Getting Started

There is no single end all be all way to draw anything in this world, but through this tutorial, I hope to provide you with several different steps by step guides to practicing and perfecting how you draw a fist. I’ve arranged them in an order that I believe to range from the easiest to the hardest fist to draw. Your experience might be different, but I’m sure you’ll find what you’re looking for below.

Not enough for you? Check this book by Burne Hogarth:

Drawing Dynamic Hands

Written by “Michaelangelo of the comic strip”

A lot of insight about the anatomy and proportions of the hands

Check Price

How To Draw A Cartoon Fist

Perhaps the easiest way to gain a level of confidence with drawing fists is to leave the realm of the realistic and focus on drawing cartoon fists. It will provide you more room to mess up with less reason to feel guilty about it and beat yourself up over the little mistakes that all artists make from time to time. This is perhaps the easiest way to draw a fist, with the fewest steps.

1. Let Go Of Reality

The most important thing to remember is that you are drawing a fist that is cartoony in nature (like in comics). There is no need to worry about making your fists look realistic – after all, we’ve all seen the shorts where the cartoon character blows up their fist by way of their thumb and really socks it to them. you don’t have to worry about perfection with cartoons because by nature the style is a little goofy.

2. Start Drawing The Fist

Drawing a cartoon fist can feel a little reminiscent of when you were little and trying to trace around your own hand. Your cartoon fist might look a little bubbly and not quite human but that’s okay. When it comes to cartoons, the proportion is not something that you have to worry about as much. Start with a bold outline of the fist and fingers and go from there.

3. Add The Embellishments

Your outline might not look much like a fist until you add a little bit of cartoonish embellishment. The wrist is always a good choice, as well as some light shading along with the fist. Minor details like popped veins will help you to define the emotion behind your cartoon fist, and help to define the overall mood of your character.

Showing your cartoon fist as wearing a glove can be seen as a reference to many classic cartoon characters.

How To Draw A Clenched Fist: Back View

Viewing a fist from the back of your hand will easily show you why this is an excellent step into more realistic fists after practicing a couple of cartoon fists. It will help you to start seeing a pattern that will help make the rest of your fist drawing incredibly easy. When you look at the back of your fist, you will be able to start viewing your hand as a series of shapes and curves.

For every beginner, I strongly recommend reading our ultimate drawing guide.

1. Draw The Main Part Of Your Fist

You’re essentially drawing the back of your hand and little else in this step. The best part of this is: The back of a hand is essentially a trapezoid in shape. The exact dimensions might vary, but in the end, you will find a great variety of quadrilaterals in your hand. For now, we are merely focusing on the trapezoid that forms the main part of your hand.

2.Draw Your Knuckles

Your knuckles are not quadrilaterals, but tiny triangles with rounded corners. They also aren’t all the same exact height all the time. Place for rounded triangles along the top of your fist and you will start to see the basic outline taking shape. You don’t have to worry about stray lines right now if drawing them helps you to get to a fist that you enjoy looking at and feel proud of creating. Don’t worry about drawing your thumb right now either, because we will be doing that in the next step.

3. Draw Your Thumb

The thumb can range from a rounded triangle to an oddly shaped quadrilateral. It can even disappear entirely from view! It all depends on how exactly the fist is clenched. The placement of the thumb can do a lot to depict the mood of the fist. Take the time and play around with the thumb, and observe how the position changes the mood that the fist puts out.

4. Clean-Up Time!

We have a mess of lines by now, don’t we? Trapezoids, triangles, and quadrilaterals gave us the shape, but it’s time to make sure that the lines that don’t matter to the shape of the fist are removed from the end product. Pay close attention to the overlaps, as some of those lines do provide key details of the fist. This is also the moment where you can add soft curves to help evoke a more fleshy feel to your drawing, rather than a stiff one.

Using a kneaded eraser can help you to get into the tiniest corners of your drawing.

Faber-Castell Kneaded Erasers

The perfect drawing eraser choice for artists

Extremely kneadable and absorbent

Check Price

5. Add More Details!

At this point, you’re ready to add shading and details to your fist. Is there a scar or freckle on the hand? How tightly is the fist clenched, and how much of the knuckle is actually bulging out? Can you see veins through the skin of the fist? There are a variety of details that will help to bring your fist to life. At this point, the drawing is in your very capable hands, and anything that you choose to add to it is in the realm of artistic licensing.

How To Draw A Clenched Fist: Top View

Drawing a fist coming at the viewer of the drawing can be a really dynamic way to arrange the picture. There are a few more details when compared to drawing the back of your fists, but this is another easy angle to draw – even if you do see more of your fingers from this angle. There’s no reason to fear, you just have to look for the shapes.

1. Draw The Fingers of Your Hand

Your fingers are a little like a rectangle that is slightly askew. My first instinct when looking at my fist from this angle is that they are a rectangle containing four rectangles that reduce ever so slightly in size. For now, we aren’t going to worry about the knuckles, because there’s one more important feature that we can see.

2. Draw Your Thumb

You have an excellent view of your thumb from this angle. Don’t worry about the fine details, just make sure that the general shape is there for the time being. Your thumb is a little like a chunky diamond or oval from this angle, hidden slightly by your other four fingers.

3. Draw Your Knuckles

This is the time to round off all your knuckles and the tip of your thumb. You can’t really see the tips of any other fingers from this angle, but its important to make sure that you line all of the peaks and valleys of your knuckles at this point because we’re almost at the end of this angle.

4. Clean Up The Lines

Stray lines are a boon when you’re trying to get the shape right, but they are one of the first things you need to deal with when finishing up your drawing of a fist from the top. This is especially important this time as we have a lot to do in the next step on this guide.

Go over the main lines of your drawing with a darker pencil, like an HB or B2, so that the picture pops more and looks more finished.

Castle Art Supplies Pencils and Sketch Set

Professional art pencil set

40 total pieces, including graphite, charcoal and pastel pencils

Check Price

5. Add The Details!

From this angle, we can see a fair bit of detail and shading on our hands. It’s time to bring your drawing to life by adding all of those little details that make hands unique and tricky to draw. Shadows play along the lines separating all of your fingers and will help to give your thumb the definition needed to suggest depth that you might be worried is missing. You also have a fantastic view of a variety of creases in your knuckles as well as your thumbnail! Take the time to give life to the fist, and include any scars or freckles that might be found on your fingers.

How To Draw A Clenched Fist: Side View

From the side, you can see a lot of the folds of your fingers in a clenched fist. On the surface, it might look a little intimidating, but you can easily master this angle of drawing fists. After all, you’ve already come this far, right? What’s a little more challenge when you’ve already managed to prove yourself determined? Take a breath, and pick up your pencil. We’re going to draw a fist from the side.

1. Draw The Main Part Of Your Hand

This is another trapezoid shape. Don’t worry about the inside creases caused by the curl of your fingers. It’s always quickest to get the roughest sense of the fist before piling all the details and pieces that help to make a hand seem real.

2. Draw Your Fingers And Thumb

Only focus on the outside fingers for the moment. You don’t have to go into great detail just yet, especially in regard to the inner curl of the fingers. A few shallow rectangles and one chunky rectangle will bring the fingers and thumb into view with ease. Leave the knuckles alone for the time being, because we’re just getting the roughest feeling for the fist as viewed from the side.

Use a lighter pencil, such as an H4, in order to draw in all the lines but have an easier time cleaning up later on.

3. Draw Your Inner Finger

The inner curl of the finger can look daunting, but it’s really just a jagged and angular spiral. There are a number of little offshoots along the spiral, but we can save those for the final step of the guide where we add all of the details that help to make the hand look fleshy and alive. For now, a rough and slightly spurred spiral with multiple sharp corners is all we need to worry about.

4. Draw Your Knuckles

Round off the knuckles and define where your knuckles sit. This step will really finalize the overall outline of the fist and help you to see what parts need a little extra attention and adjusting. This is also a good opportunity to add the soft curves of the flesh on your fingers that has been pressed out of place by clenching your fist.

5. Clean Up The Lines

This is probably the best step in the process. Removing all of those extraneous lines will help to make your fist look so much better. Drawing a fist can be stressful and more often than not an artist will hate their work, but cleaning up the lines will bring you that brief glimmer of “Wow, I really can draw fists!” cleaning up the lines is also a good opportunity to fix any details that bother you, and make the final outline sharp and eye-catching.

6. Add The Details!

You see a lot of squishy flesh when your hand is like this. There’s plenty of shading and wrinkles that you need to add in order to bring your drawing to life. While you can’t see as many wrinkles on your knuckles from this angle, you can see a few that help to define the hand. The inner spiral of your clenched finger is especially riddled with wrinkles though, and you will likely spend a lot of time perfecting the details of that area.

How To Draw A Clenched Fist: Front View

This is easily the most difficult angle to draw a fist from in my opinion. However, it is an incredibly dynamic angle and can add a lot when you’re staging a picture in your mind. While the vision in the mind never makes it to the paper in quite the same way, it won’t be because you aren’t capable as an artist. After all, you’re willing to try a challenging angle to create a great picture.

1. Draw The Main Shape Of The Fist

From the front, the overall shape of your hand is that of a pentagon. It might be difficult to ignore all the details that you can see, but we are going to build up those details over the course of this tutorial. We’re merely laying the frame of the fist in the step. The details will build up with ease.

2. Draw The Fingers

There’s a lot of layers of details from this angle, but the first one that we’re going to work on is that of the fingers. Thankfully, the fingers are still delightful little rectangles that appear to decrease in size ever so slightly. There’s a curve to the layout of the fingers from this angle though, so instead of being four rectangles in a larger rectangle, they are four rectangles in a very skinny trapezoid that is laying on its side. Your fingers take up half of the pentagon shape we already drew.