How to Draw a Couple Holding Hands

Get a reference picture. Try a simple image search for "two people holding hands", or "cartoon characters holding hands" if you want something more stylized.

• In the scheme of things, this is probably the most critical step. One hand isn't the most basic thing to draw, with its complex shape and proportions. Drawing two hands is by no means easy, and you have the added challenge of conveying the ways that the fingers and palms overlap.

Break their hands into very simple shapes. These serve as guidelines for a little extra help when it's time for you to go in and make them more realistic. Think in the kind of shapes a third-grader would know. Maybe a rectangle for that person's palm, a half-circle for those fingers, parallel (ish) lines for their arms, and so forth.

Make a skeleton for their fingers using straight lines. Map out where you intend to place their fingers by drawing straight lines that will eventually be replaced by the fingers. Bend the lines wherever you intend their joints to.

Flesh out their fingers using round shapes. Every finger has three sections, although some will be covered up. Draw a new shape in every section while looking up at your reference frequently.

Darken this skeleton. Erase in this area so that you can barely see what you've drawn. Trace over this skeleton, and leave your first set of guidelines invisible. Be sure not to touch these where it comes to their arms or the palm.

Edit the shape of the top hand. Show the wrist with help from your reference image. Arms don't keep one thickness all the way to the hand; they dip inward on both sides and then fan out again where the wrist ends.

Fix the shapes of their arms. If you look at your own arm, you'll notice that each section is thicker in some places than others. For example, your arm gets thinner and then thicker before the elbow in a hyperbola-like shape, if the arm is straight.

• Erase and redraw things as needed. By the time you're done with this step, the arms will look considerably different from your guidelines.

Add some curved lines to indicate their muscles and joints. Try to find where these lines are in your reference image (if they are there) before you do this.

Trace the outline of the fingers. Real fingers obviously don't look like a bunch of circles the whole way through. Try to create an edge using the guidelines you made for help. Be mindful of where they bend.

Erase all of your guidelines and start adding detail. Draw ridges for the knuckles and wrinkles in the skin.

Refine your drawing. Erase and redraw as many things as you need to until you are happy with the final product. Darken this.

Color the drawing, shade it, or leave it as it is.

Sketch some horizontal guidelines. This tutorial has three lines, each with one "Head" space between them. If you're comfortable with a different scale, use that instead.

Draw two circles for their heads. Depending on the height of your characters, you might need to adjust how they fit on the scale. Remember that these circles are just guidelines, and the finished product will look nothing like them.

Add their necks, which are barely visible compared to their huge heads and wide bodies. The necks should stop just under the second line.

Create a frame for the rest of their bodies. Show their hands and feet with circles. Notice the slight inward curve of the legs and outward curve of the arms. Look up some examples of chibis if you're not exactly sure what to do.

Flesh out their skeletons. People, cartoons or not, are more than a few straight lines and circles. Put effort into making this the precursor of a human, no matter how stylized it may be.

Darken the lines you want to keep and erase the ones you do not.

Draw character A's hair and clothes. Keep it light and simple. Detail should not be the main focus now.

• Make the hair go above and around the circle you drew instead of falling flat on it. Otherwise, the head won't seem big enough!

Draw character B's hair and clothes. Make them big, yet simple, just like in the last step.

Erase the guidelines that are covered up by A and B's hair and clothes. Refine the rest of them.

Draw their hands like overlapping mittens. Don't forget to show A's thumb over B's palm.

Draw their facial expressions. Chibis have huge eyes, and hardly more than a dot for a nose. Everything on a chibi is supposed to be cute and simplified, so take that into account.

Detail their clothes and add some clumps of hair. Erase the scale if you haven't already.

Darken your final lines and color. Add anything else you like, such as a background or flowers.

Get a reference picture. It doesn't matter too much if your couple is facing the front or back because the end result will be a single shape with color. The only difference will be the placement of hair, and you can easily alter that on your own. For this tutorial, however, they will be facing away from us.

Draw nine horizontal lines spaced one head apart each. These heads should be reasonably sized for humans, unlike in the previous method.

Using your reference image, draw a frame for their bodies. It doesn't have to be anything complex. Lines work for the most part, with a few circles to show joints or thicker parts of the body. Using the horizontal guidelines you just drew to get the right proportions will help greatly.

Add hair to both of the characters. Only draw the outline, not any details. Give them some ears too with half heart shapes. Add any other details you want to the heads.

Flesh out their bodies. Draw legs, arms, and everything else. Don't bother with the two joint hands, but get everything else down. Erase the scale and the frame if you haven't already.

Give them clothes. Draw the outlines of sleeves, wrinkles, and anything else.

Draw the hands. Find a separate reference image that shows hands holding each other in greater detail. Feel free to simplify because of the difference in size. This is a silhouette, so most of the fingers won't even be shown.

Refine your shapes and darken the finished product.

Color it in. A silhouette is only one color. A shadow is a type of silhouette, and that would be black or another very dark color. Get creative! It shouldn't look like doom and gloom.

Get a reference image for the alternative pose you are trying to draw. When drawing hands, it's always a good idea to have a reference, even if you don't copy it exactly. It's good to know where to place things, to imagine things from different angles, and so forth.

Break the hands into simple shapes. Sketch this lightly, as these are only guidelines. The shapes don't have to be named, they can just be oblong blobs, as long as they capture the shape of the hand. Don't worry about the fingers in this step. Do try drawing a rough estimate of the palms and forearms.

Indicate the fingers. Using a few straight lines, plan where you want to place the fingers with respect to their palms and each other. A finger is hardly ever a straight line. Be sure to bend them like they would in real life, or how they are bent in your reference.

Give the fingers some depth. Now that we have an idea of where we want their fingers to go, it's time to make them a bit more realistic. Turn each section of the finger into a rectangle or oval, instead of just a line. Be aware of where they overlap in your reference and your drawing.

Outline the drawing. Using the guidelines you've been making, trace the outline, editing it as you go along. For example, don't outline every dip as you change from one oval to the next. Instead, make the fingers—and everything else—realistic.

Erase the guidelines if you haven't already. You just made an outline, so you won't need them any more.

Refine your drawing. If it doesn't look like a finished hand, that is most likely because this is your first outline. Erase and redraw things as many times as you need to until you are happy with the result. Darken this.

Add details. Draw creases in the skin, nails, knuckles, and so on.