Hands

I am working on a series of prints that explore the form of functional hands. Most hands when seen in art are fairly posed and idealized. Nothing wrong with this, it's just not what the hands I see from day to day look like. I few months ago I was sipping tea and eating noodles. I noticed that the hand holding the tea cup (my left) was in a very interesting shape. Using my other hand, I lifted the cup from where I was cradling it, trying my darnedest to keep the left hand as it was when holding the cup. What I found was a very appealing shape. It was my hand, functioning as it is meant to do, i.e. completely intuitively and adaptively. I had not willed it into this unique shape, with the ring and pinky finger tucked beneath the base of the cup, and the thumb bookending the cup with the middle and index fingers. My hand had created this perfect chassis completely on its own, without conscious edict from the brain. I find this fascinating.

I became curious about what the right hand was doing. It was feeding my face noodles with some chopsticks is what it was doing! I was a little more familiar with this hand posture, having waxed technical in a knowing (read: annoying) manner about Princess Masako's instructions on proper chopstick form and official technique and how they vary from my own to anyone who would listen. Like I did with the cup, I carefully removed the chopsticks without disturbing the posture of the hand. What I saw looked something like this:


I began playing around with different objects and seeing what the "functional hand" (as I am calling it) looked like. It looked good. The appeal of the functional hand lingered but I wasn't sure what to do with it. But while packing my portfolio of prints to go to Chicago, I took a look at a print I made two years ago; The print is a 16 foot long scroll detailing the historical ninja (as apposed to the modern, fictional ninja). One of the sections depicted some of the Mudra that ninja used in their spiritual practice. Here is one from the scroll:

My functional hand idea immediately came to mind and I came up with the idea of presenting these hand postures with lino-cuts.

Here is the first (chopsticks):

I originally planned to have the black background, but then thought of maybe having a white background with a simple border to frame it in. Here is a bad photoshop mock up of what that might look like:

Which style do you prefer?

I have already begun compiling photos of my hands doing various things with and without objects. But I don't want to just show my hands, I would like to do yours too! let me know if you are interested. I would love to draw your hands!

Song of the Day: El Pueblo Unido, Thievery Corporation. Today I bought my tickets to Sunday night's show. w00t!