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

[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.