Hands

Do not fear

That's my #1 tip. One of the longest running art jokes is hands are scary and hard, and while I always side with a good goof, I think this one has overstayed its welcome a bit. When you hear from everyone that hands are scary you start to believe it, and combined with already-present apprehensions, you'll get in your own head when you draw them and likely feel like they are always going to be bad and/or a struggle. That's how I thought a few years ago because I thought hands were scary. 

They aren't! They're about on the level of a head in terms of general complexity with # of features, but tend to be less complex with overlapping upon rotation of the form (your hand is a mostly flat rectangle split at the ends, whereas a head is a sphere and extended cube with sockets, protrusions, etc. And like the head, you have the ability as an artist to interpret a hand and simplify or complicate it as you see fit. 

The hands above are my personal preference regarding level of detail. All of the included lines are the ones that "complete" a hand, and I feel no need to continue to bolster them, as they quickly become overdone. It's important I mention also this is in regards to line work, we're fully neglecting lighting here as that would warrant more lines for me. 

Some important landmarks: 

• The palm: It's the big squish of the hand. You have the side attached to your thumb with all your hand meat, and pointing your thumb at your pinky will show you how much it moves and compresses according to thumb position. The palm on the pinky side is more dense, less fat, and often functions to keep the rest of the hand stable/in place. Moving your hand around will reveal the many wrinkles it hides as it does its job. Another squish is the pad of palm just below your fingers, and folding your hand in half shows how they crumple to allow the fingers downward movement. 
• The heart line: The above mentioned finger crumple exposes heart lines. I make note of one, it begins between your index and middle finger and travels diagonally to your palm on your pinky side, ending about halfway down. This diagonal is a key feature to me, as it makes the left vs right hand read very clearly, even without attached fingers. 
• Fingers: There is no correct way. My best advice is to create round rectangles, and slightly vary their thickness about the halfway point. As far as moving them around, look at your own hand, wiggle your fingers around, notice where there are folds and understand why there are folds. Folds occur opposite of stretch, and a bent finger is very stretched around the back, hence the folds in the front. The opposite is true when extended; the skin on the front stretches, and distinct wrinkles form around the knuckles. Nails are a very whatever-looks-good-to-you-they-can-be-kind-of-ugly-sometimes thing, so experiment. 
• Wrist: On your pinky side there's (probably) a slightly protruding bone that you can exaggerate to your heart's content. This is another touch that makes the position of the hand easier to read as a whole. Again there's a squish and stretch exchange, when you bend your wrist forward, many deep wrinkles form on the palm side, and the back stretches. You can really communicate intense movement with this part in particular, emphasizing the back rounded form between to straight lines (top of hand and forearm) is effective. 

And that's pretty much it as far as what I think about. I remember when I was young I got so pissed about being scared of hands that I filled probably two or three pages with only them, and I haven't had a problem with them since. You can use these images as general guides when you approach hands, and pick and choose what you want to include based on your preferences. I also recommend trying an outer contour drawing for all of these, see if you can recreate the outermost line that encases each hand, and you'll see the effectiveness of silhouette drawing. From there you can detail away.