How can I draw more fluid hands instead of sausage fingers?

[Steven66]

I’ve been trying to get better at drawing hands from imagination, but I keep running into the same issue where my sketches look stiff and blocky. I’ve practiced the basic structure with boxes and cylinders, but when I try to draw a relaxed, natural gesture, the fingers end up looking like a bundle of sausages instead of something fluid.

[Savannah.W]

I have been there the hands look stiff when you move from boxes to gesture. The fix for me was not more practice of the same shape but thinking in planes and then adding joints. I keep the palm as a flat shape and draw the fingers as curved lines that show the knuckles.

[GeorgeW]

One concrete thing I tried was drawing long finger lines from a few angles with no palm at all. It trained the rhythm of the hand before I worried about volume and it helped a bit.

[DavidRH]

I still falter when the pose is relaxed and the fingers bunch up. I notice I tend to smooth too much or read the wrist angle wrong and the look stays blocky.

[Zoey_L]

Could the real issue be the overall pose you imagine rather than the fingers alone?