Drawing things touching is super hard! So don’t feel bad for struggling with it; I am still learning to do it myself, but I have found that there’s a trick in the lineart stage that you can employ which helps a lot.

Real life doesn’t have outlines, but we use lines in drawings to show where objects begin and end. Where things touch the spaces between them are reduced or eradicated, so thinner lines can help to enforce the idea that they are touching;

thicker lines emphasize distance between objects and the solidity of objects. If something is really pressing against another thing, you can completely break the line or sometimes remove it altogether! Try it out and see what works.

A simple way to think about it is that when two masses are pressed together they are making one mass overall. You use lines to separate objects, so it follows that if you want to ‘join’ two objects, you remove the line!

Remember that soft objects mesh more easily, so you can break and thin the line much more with flesh or fabric, while if you have a hard object it will maintain it’s form (and therefore outline) even when pressed against something else, and will even force a softer object to change shape!

Also thank you, polite anon, I am not hurting per say but my elbow and wrist still feel a bit funny, so I am trying to rest them and do my stretches as much as possible. Keep your hands healthy people!