Even get a high five? An Ok sign? A middle finger?
Hands are part of gestures, and gestures can make your characters come alive on the page. Instead of just having two static characters talking, they can be reacting and interacting. They can be expressing themselves with their hands when they are just, y’know, talking and stuff.
To start, here’s a picture of Simone Biles on the beam. Her hands are part of the expression of the pose. It follows naturally from her arms and makes it more dynamic. There’s nothing accidental about the way she holds them.
Many artists are great at action poses similar to this. But what if characters are just standing around talking? You can use hands to enliven the conversation and expression.
A good way to get some ideas is observe movies and television shows in which characters talk to each other. Look at the gestures. What do people do with their hands when they are mad? Excited? Frightened?
Here are a few stills of Peter Falk talking to John Cassavetes from the movie “Mikey and Nicky.” Notice how Falk uses his hands. There are some great hand gestures here.
But this is an area where I really like to study what the great cartoonists do. Observing from life is great, but it’s also important to see how it translates into comics. I already mentioned Uderzo. I stole a lot of great gestures from him. When he exaggerates gestures like this, it becomes comical, but they still look natural.
Uderzo’s characters are always doing something with their hands. It adds energy to what would otherwise be static scenes.
Here’s some hands from John Byrne. Notice the difference in all the hands—none of them are posed alike. Also notice how the hands complete the line of action.
The MAD artists were great at this kind of stuff. They drew adults as if they were acting like children and I ate it up as a kid. Here’s Jack Davis:
and Wally Wood:
Max Sarin did some brilliant work on Giant Days. He is the master of both expressions AND gestures.
Here’s a recent cartoon by Avi Steinberg. Even though these characters are very simple—almost stick figures—he’s using gestures to emphasize the conversation so he doesn’t just have talking heads.
One of the best ways to find interesting gestures to study and incorporate into your personal style is looking at your favorite comics. But it’s also worth going to the local library and browsing through the graphic novel section. Check out (literally) anything the catches your eye. Practice copying the gestures with a character of your own design.
In the next post I’ll show you a page of script from my newest book, Checkups, Shots, and Robots, and how I applied gestures to it.