How do you draw hands and feet in proportion to the head when life drawing?

A subscriber wrote in asking a question so many of us have encountered when figure drawing: How do you get the hands and feet to be in proportion to the head when life drawing?

We could also ask, how do you get the hands and feet in proportion to the rest of the figure in general? But I know a lot of people use the head as a main unit of measurement when drawing people.

The average person is said to be 7.5 heads tall, the nipples land 1 head below the chin, the navel another head below that, the shoulders 1.5-2 heads wide, and so on and so forth.

In this article, I'm going to tackle both literal proportional standards and a practical approach to comparing these proportions from life where the model is in a variety of poses. Watch the video for visual examples!

Proportion of the Hand to the Head

First of all, remember that everyone's proportions vary a bit. Think about how many people of the same height have a wide range of shoe sizes, for example. The relationship of the size of the hand to the head will similarly vary.

As a general rule, though, the length of the hand from the end of the palm to the end of the middle finger is about the length of the face. Not the head, but rather from the chin to the hairline.

Proportion of the Foot to the Head

The first proportional relationship that comes to mind for me regarding the foot, is that the foot is about the same length as the distance of the forearm from the inside of the elbow to the wrist.

This also happens to be about the same size as the height of the head! Go ahead and put your chin inside your elbow and see where your wrist lands above your head... but maybe not if you're in public.

So we can say that the length of the foot from heel to to is about the height of the head.

The Problem with These Proportions

While I think it's great to have knowledge of these proportions as tools, their usefulness is reduced in many if not most poses. If the model has their hand outstretched toward you, their hand might appear much larger than their head, and vice versa. So the distance from the viewer affects these proportions.

And when the hand, foot, or head are foreshortened, these proportional standards again go out the window.

So what can you do to get things the right proportion?

Comparative Measuring for Proportion

This is just one approach, but it's quite helpful and can still be used to compare specifically the hands and feet to the head: Comparative Measuring!

Use your pencil as a ruler, and your thumb to mark measurements. Close one eye and hold your arm fully extended out in front of you, overlapping the pencil with the part of the figure you want to measure. Place your thumb to hold on to the measurement, and then move that to another body part you're comparing to.

So let's say you're measuring the foot. You'll want to hold the pencil over your vision of the foot, measure its height, marking it with your thumb, and then move the pencil up to the head and notice the size in comparison. Perhaps the foot will be the same as the height of the head, or maybe it'll only come up to the eyebrows.

Let's say it comes up to the eyebrows. Now go to your drawing, and take a measurement from the chin to the eyebrows on your drawing. This will be the length of the foot!

Notice that you DON'T want to do this: Don't take a measurement of the foot on the model and then copy the measurement directly onto your drawing. This only works if you've done the whole drawing by measuring the model, and in typical life drawing sessions you don't have time for this.

So you want it to be a relative measurement, not a literal measurement.

Be sure to watch the video for a bit more of a visual explanation!

I hope you found that helpful and I'd love to know if this technique works for you!

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