How to draw the palm of a hand: its shape, the thumb and the lines

A palm is easy to draw as a square, with the thumb stuck on its side and three lines put anywhere across it. The open hand measured here is drawn differently. The palm is longer than it is wide, the thumb splits off a little above halfway down, and each of the three long lines starts and fades out at a place you can find again. This guide measures one open right hand from hands and feet, volume 1, seen straight on from the palm side. The fingers themselves, from the palm and the back, are measured in how to draw fingers.

Everything is measured against the palm's length: from where the middle finger meets the palm down to the bottom of the palm, the curved line where the palm meets the wrist. Heights are fractions of that length, counted down from the top.

The shape of the palm

The palm is about a quarter longer than it is wide. Measured across, just under the fingers, it is about four fifths of its length.

The middle finger is about three quarters as long as the palm. From the palm side, the fingers start at about the height of the webs between them, so they look shorter here than from the back, where they are measured from the knuckles.

The palm is about half as wide again as the wrist. The little-finger edge runs almost straight from the little finger down to the wrist, leaning in a little as it goes. The thumb side is the one that changes: below the thumb, the outline slants down and in to the wrist around the thumb's fleshy pad.

The thumb

The thumb splits off a little above halfway down the palm. The bottom of the web between the thumb and the index finger sits just above the half line.

With the hand spread flat, the thumb tip reaches about up to where the index finger meets the palm.

The three long lines

Palm readers call them the heart line, the head line and the life line. A drawing needs only where each starts, where it fades out and which way it leans.

• The heart line is the top one. It starts on the little-finger edge a little over a third of the way down and rises toward the index side, fading out near the base of the middle finger, on its index-finger side, about a tenth of the way down.
• The head line and the life line start close together, at the same height, just inside the edge under the index finger, a quarter of the way down.
• The head line slopes down across the palm toward the little-finger side and fades out under the ring finger, about halfway down, a little below the bottom of the thumb web. In this drawing the heart line and the head line lean opposite ways and stay apart.
• The life line curves down around the thumb's pad. Three quarters of the way down, the pad it wraps takes a little over half the palm's width there, and it narrows below that toward the wrist. The line ends just short of the bottom of the palm, about three fifths of the way across from the little-finger side.

The drawing adds a few shorter, lighter lines: one across the thumb's pad, one on the little-finger side, the lines where the two pads meet near the wrist, a short one crossing the heart line, and the creases where each finger meets the palm. Draw the three long lines first and keep the short ones lighter.

How to draw the palm of a hand, step by step

1. Draw the palm's length as a line, then make the palm about four fifths as wide as that, about a fifth of the way down, where the little finger will start.
2. Mark the quarters down the palm.
3. Draw the little-finger edge almost straight down to the curved line where the palm meets the wrist, then a wrist about two thirds as wide as the palm.
4. Split off the thumb a little above the half mark: run the index-finger edge down to the web, then swing the thumb's pad down and in to the wrist.
5. Add the fingers and the creases where they meet the palm, the middle finger about three quarters of the palm's length. How to draw fingers places each tip.
6. Start the head and life lines close together at the first quarter, just inside the index-finger edge.
7. Run the life line around the thumb's pad, wide enough that the pad takes a little over half the palm at the three-quarter mark, and stop it just short of the wrist.
8. Run the head line down to under the ring finger, about halfway down.
9. Draw the heart line from a little over a third of the way down the little-finger edge up toward the base of the middle finger.

Common mistakes

• Drawing the palm square. It is about a quarter longer than it is wide.
• Attaching the thumb at the top corner. It splits off a little above halfway down.
• Drawing the life line tight against the thumb. At the three-quarter mark, the thumb's pad takes a little over half the width.
• Running the head line across the whole palm. Here it fades out under the ring finger.

What this does and does not cover

This is one drawing of one open right hand, redrawn in line from a render of a 3D model, seen straight on from the palm side. Other hands have other proportions, and palm lines vary from hand to hand far more than the palm's shape does, so take the numbers as a description of this drawing and follow the lines your own reference shows. The top of the palm is where the middle finger meets it, about level with the webs beside it; the little finger meets the palm lower, so heights near it are counted from the middle finger's level, not its own. The palm's width changes down its length: it is taken just under the fingers when the palm is compared with its length and the wrist, and across the palm at the height in question for the thumb's pad and the end of the life line. The light lines fade out rather than stop, so their ends are where the lines can still be seen. The thumb tip's height holds only for this flat, spread hand. A cupped or closed hand and a hand turned away from straight on are not measured here; the back of the hand is measured in how to draw the back of a hand.

A short exercise

Hold your own hand flat, palm toward you, fingers and thumb spread. Measure the palm's length with a pencil, from where your middle finger meets the palm to the line at your wrist, and see how many times its width fits. Find where your thumb web sits against the half, and where each long line on your palm starts and fades out, against the palm's length. Then draw your palm with the lines you can see, following their curves.

The hand is the open hand from hands and feet, volume 1, drawn at sixteen angles, 22.5 degrees apart, with a standing foot and both of Lincoln's hands from Leonard Volk's casts. The same hand at other angles is in how to draw hands at different angles, from the edge in how to draw a hand from the side, and closed around a handle in how to draw a hand holding something. For the same way of measuring applied to the head, start with how to draw the head at any angle.