Rather on paper or on the screen, hands are one of the most challenging things to draw in cartooning. But, as with everything else, a little practice will have you drawing hands in no time. There are numerous ways to draw hands and practically an infinate number of poses. But I'll show you a few tricks to make it easier.
The top three hands(in red) show three different methods of sketching hands. The first is good for funny pages style or semi-realistic hands. Notice that there are only four fingers. It is very hard to draw five finger hands with out winding up with a "club hand". So just draw four.
The next hand is good for realistic style cartoons. It has five fingers with realistic lengths.
The last just shows that the sketch can be real quick. This hand just tells the direction of each finger. And approximatly where it sits at the end of the palm.
The first drawn hand(in black above) was easy to draw. I just used the curve tool to draw the top line of the top finger. Then I copy and pasted it for each finger. Next, I used the curve tool to draw the bottom of the hand. Finally, I used the curve tool to draw the thumb. I used a simular technique to draw the hand just below it.
The two hands that are holding the bar was also easy. I first drew the hand with the fingers visible. To do this I used the roto-ellipse tool to draw one digit. Then I copy and pasted it for each other finger, including the thumb. To draw the other hand I copy and pasted the hand and just erased the finger tips. I also had to put the thumb behind the bar.
Here is the hands on our character. The hands don't make sense yet, but they will later. But that is a different topic.
All we need now is some feet.