I just noticed this!

[krait]

I've seen this cool hand reference floating around Tumblr before:




But tonight's the first time I thought "wow, that diagram showing where the thumb lines up to the other fingers looks kind of weird; does it really look like that?"

Quick comparison to my own hands says: nope! When rested on a flat surface, the tip of my thumb is waaaay above the palm/finger knuckle joints! It's pretty close to being even with the first finger hinge joint of my pointer finger. o.O

Either this guide was drawn by someone with weird hands, or I have weird hands, or (possibly) this is one of those subtly gendered proportion things.

How do YOUR hands line up?

Comments

[boxofdelights]

On me and on my much longer-boned son, the tip of the thumb is a little higher than the halfway mark between the palm/finger knuckle joint and the first finger hinge joint.

[cumuluscastle]

My hands are like yours and not like the diagram. Then again, I do have longer fingers than many people. Do you?

Funny, I was observing someone's drawing and saying something to them about the fingers on the hand they were drawing (their own), when I took a quick glance at the person's fingers and realized they were much shorter than mine, so what I was saying wasn't true.

[krait]

Oh, noooo -- I have short fat stubby fingers! Relatively, anyway. My very longest finger is *just* as long as my palm (comparing middle finger to middle of palm), so my fingers are pretty small/my palms pretty large.

[edenfalling]

My thumbs come to about halfway between where my index finger joins my palm and the first finger-joint on my index finger.

Also, I literally cannot get either of my hands into the position shown in that comparative finger length diagram. My thumb won't do it unless I contort my palm such that my thumb is no longer resting flat against the surface in question and there is a noticeable bulge and line where it's jammed uncomfortably tight up against my palm to get the tip that close to my index finger... and even then, it's tilted half onto its side instead of having the nail facing straight upward.

In summary, hands are weird and everybody's are weird in different ways. :-)

[pebblerocker]

My thumbs are more than halfway to the middle joint on my finger, and my (male) partner's thumbs are even longer in comparison. That picture really does look wrong even without hands to compare it to.

[soc_puppet]

Those fingers look awfully skinny to me. The index finger in particular looks more "enforced for the sake of the drawing" skinny than natural skinny. The space between the fingers in general just seems unusually great in that diagram, IMO, or at least for the fingers to be pointing straight up. If they were arced out, then the spacing where they join the hand would make sense.

Like edenfalling, I can't get my thumb to do that. If it's placed spatially like the diagram, the nail isn't facing up; it's facing away from the rest of my hand. The closest I come with my thumb is by pressing down on the table in the direction of my pinkie finger, but that makes my pinkie nail go sideways.

The third drawing (first one of the "clawed" hand), it looks like the artist made the middle joint of the fingers too long. They look almost more like spider legs than fingers. Also, I don't think the artist implied the hollow created by the hand when holding one's fingers in that position very well. Alternately, they're holding the first joint straight up and down, in which case the inward curve of the fingers is far too extreme. For a third option, they could be reaching farther down the palm, but according to my hand, the nails are in the wrong position for that, and it's a very uncomfortable position to hold the hand for long enough to draw it. It's also an unnatural pose; possibly because it's so uncomfortable, I can't think of a single reason to hold one's hand that way, or what one would hold in one's hand that would force it into such a position.

Hands are among the harder body parts to draw, not least because of how expressive they are; even so, I'm really not impressed by this work.

[laurajv]

The last drawing is super strange, and I don't think you can get that view (at least, not without a model, because while I can get that view of my hand, the attached arm is really really really not going off at that angle).

I think the reference aims to correct some common beginner errors, and it is decent for what it's aiming at, but it's...odd.

[edenfalling]

With the exception of the implied angle of the thumb nail, I can recreate a self-view of the hand and arm position in the fourth drawing, but it hurts like burning to hold for more than a couple seconds because I have to put strong pressure on my shoulder to get my elbow out far enough to create the arm angle. I also think it would be more natural for the middle finger to be raised higher than the index finger, rather than vice versa as in the picture, but that's a different issue.

So yeah, as you say, these diagrams give reasonable advice in the abstract -- hands are bony, fingers arc, etc. -- but the fine details are very iffy.

[krait]

I did notice they were super-skinny, wide-spaced fingers, too -- they look like dude hands in manga, rather than a photorealistic rendering. Stylised, definitely, and designed for emphatic suggestion rather than portraiture.

Perfectly valid (see: manga!) and doesn't ping me as "wrong", except for the super-short thumb! :D

I didn't spend much time looking at the curved/"clawed" hand, really; I read the text, went 'yeah, fingers do that' and thus basically skipped over it. You probably have a point, though.

[krait]

Heh, my thumbs are kind of weird. While it's not exactly comfortable, I can turn my thumbs so that they're (pretty nearly) nail-up beside my other fingers,and do so fairly often; if I stick my hand out a car window, that's the position it takes automatically.

(The better to form a flat "airfoil" and swoosh through the air. Because the child of a pilot learns about lift and drag at a pretty early age.) :D

[tropicsbear]

The tip of my thumb reaches the middle part of my index finger, more or less.

[dancing_serpent]

Nope, my thumb is a lot longer than that, like you described yours. The rest is pretty much like the drawing, though.

[blnchflr]

Like everyone else, above halfway mark.

[novembermond]

I thought the same thing about the thumb, then I put my hand flat on the surface, pressed it really flat, and my thumb comes up halfway to my finger joint. If my hand is not completely flat, it comes up further. I think the thumb is too short in the drawing, but the rest works.

also, the last drawing, no matter how I postition my hand, the wrist does not achieve this angle. However, the last drawing is not about the orearm, it's about boniness/softness and there I find it pretty accurate. well, my knuckles are bigger and therefore rounder.

why did I even spend so much time looking at this and then my hand wth.