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| Something I see every day... my hand, that is, not the ink drawing. |
On of my earliest memories is of me waking up on morning and holding my hand above my reclining face. Open, close. Open, close. It's a small hand. The morning light is reflected in the ceiling in the distance behind my view of this pink hand that still retains a bit of the plumpness from infancy.
Fifty years later, I'm helping one of my young art students, eight-year-old Justin, fold some colorful paper for a 3D creative construction project.
"You're hands look dry", he says.
"Yeah, I know".
I keep working as I notice my wrinkly, knobby-jointed hands with their lattice-work of arid superficial fissures.
"I just don't like using lotion", I add. I never had gotten over an adolescent sensitivity to oils in hand creams.
"Do they hurt?"
Justin's question makes me laugh. (It reminds me of the loaded insult prep question, "Does your face hurt?")
"No," I say with a chuckle," They are not in as bad of shape as they look".
I always wished I had beefier, working-man's hands like my dad's. As it is I got my mom's finer-boned hands. I notice the hands of other people. The smoothness or roughness. If they are wide or slim. Square-shaped nails or oval. Hands can be so expressive and telling...even at rest.
Like my mom and her mother, my index fingers curve slightly toward the middle one. "It's for pointing around corners", I'd tell anyone who noticed. And my little finger has a slight crook in it. I noticed this, awkwardly, when I had used my hands as the visual source for a logo design for a friend's data-entry start-up company in the mid 80s. "What's with these hands on the keyboard?" he complained as he pointed out the peculiar finger shapes of the hands in the logo. I redrew the hands using photos from magazines as visual sources.
I have come to accept my hands these days. Their aged quality has character. And I have become willing to use lotion.
Post inspired by my participation in 365 Days of Tigrikorn: Day 1.
Fifty years later, I'm helping one of my young art students, eight-year-old Justin, fold some colorful paper for a 3D creative construction project.
"You're hands look dry", he says.
"Yeah, I know".
I keep working as I notice my wrinkly, knobby-jointed hands with their lattice-work of arid superficial fissures.
"I just don't like using lotion", I add. I never had gotten over an adolescent sensitivity to oils in hand creams.
"Do they hurt?"
Justin's question makes me laugh. (It reminds me of the loaded insult prep question, "Does your face hurt?")
"No," I say with a chuckle," They are not in as bad of shape as they look".
I always wished I had beefier, working-man's hands like my dad's. As it is I got my mom's finer-boned hands. I notice the hands of other people. The smoothness or roughness. If they are wide or slim. Square-shaped nails or oval. Hands can be so expressive and telling...even at rest.
Like my mom and her mother, my index fingers curve slightly toward the middle one. "It's for pointing around corners", I'd tell anyone who noticed. And my little finger has a slight crook in it. I noticed this, awkwardly, when I had used my hands as the visual source for a logo design for a friend's data-entry start-up company in the mid 80s. "What's with these hands on the keyboard?" he complained as he pointed out the peculiar finger shapes of the hands in the logo. I redrew the hands using photos from magazines as visual sources.
I have come to accept my hands these days. Their aged quality has character. And I have become willing to use lotion.
Post inspired by my participation in 365 Days of Tigrikorn: Day 1.
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| Hand practice drawings in my sketchbook spread. |
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