I’m easing back into doing figure-drawing tutorials, after recovering from Christmas. This is the beginning of probably several new tutorials on hand gestures. This one will mean more to you, if you have had a look at earlier tutorials on hands, mainly Drawing Hands, Part II: Thumb and Palm and Drawing Hands, Part IV: The Hand Reaching Down.

When we are dealing with gestures in which the fingers are bent, which is probably how they usually are, our task is a bit more complicated than in previous tutorials. This post today is just a beginning, but I’m going to look at something very important.

Here’s the hand, palm up, fingers bent towards the palm, with the bones showing:

The hand, palm up, fingers bent.

At the wrist, the forearm bones, the radius and ulna, meet the little group of bones which I have been calling the wrist block. On the other side of the wrist block are the base bones of the fingers, the carpals. The base bone of the thumb joins the wrist block about halfway between forearm and carpals.

The second joint of the thumb, and the knuckles, as described in previous tutorials, all lie in an arc (green arc), as does the end of the palm (blue arc). The two arcs approach one another in this gesture, seen from this angle, because the palm is being folded by the bending of the fingers, more so near the little finger, which is more bent here:

Arc of the knuckles

OK, now here’s the really important thing. The fingers, in this gesture, are not parallel. Instead, they are all pointing to the same place — the base of the thumb.

The ends of the bent fingers point to the same place.

What I have just described is the basic motif of many, many different gestures. More to come.