There's a thing going on on Instagram about hands. I'll post this over there later, but I thought it was worth talking about here.
I always thought my hands were homely with all those veins showing, wrinkly knuckles and uneven fingernails. They were never the long slender hands and fingernails of the pretty girls.
An aside: My mother told me at fourteen that while I would never be a beautiful swan, I would always be a very pretty duck. While that sounds terrible, and at 14 it did, she also told me something else that would turn out to be true. "You have the kind of looks that will stay. You will be more beautiful when you are older than all the other girls your age." She was right. Nobody ever thinks I'm as old as I am.
My hands, however, look my age, although I don't think we know what old hands ought to look like.
When I hold my hands up, the blood runs down, and the veins in my hands aren't so prominent.
Years ago I was talking about my ugly hands to a girlfriend. "I think your hands are beautiful," she told me. "I think they have character."
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| One of my contour drawings from 1973 |
I taught Drawing to Adult Ed students for many years, and the first class was always blind contour drawing. You draw without looking at the paper. Everybody's eyes cross. Huh? The drawing will be crappy. Well, kinda. And you draw your hand, because it is the hardest thing to draw and if you're not looking at the paper, then it's going to be really weird looking. But that's not the point. What happens on the paper is irrelevant. The exercise is designed to teach you to SEE. As a drawing teacher I could look at the paper and know if the student was "getting it" even though they saw a bunch of jumbled lines. The side effect was I looked at a lot of hands.
I made an interesting discovery. Most people had boring hands. I stopped caring about what my hands looked like, except when I drew them.
After finding that drawing of my hand (above) from 1973, I wondered if I could recreate the way I held my hand in that drawing 45 years ago. I guess yes, and it proves that it really was MY hand.
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| Lynne Tyler, Self Portrait, 1987, Contour drawing. |
Contour drawings are known for their expressive line quality and freshness. This self-portrait above, is a particularly nice example. The biggest thing contour drawing teaches is to see, but it also teaches you to measure with your eyes by teaching your eye and your hand to move at the same time, at the same speed and in the same direction.
We think about our hands as doing the tasks we do, but it's really our brain telling them what to do.
Hands are simply tools.
13 comments:
Your hands are beautiful. They are hands that create, type, and teach. What could be better?
We are about the same age and my hands have a similar look.
They will never be in that old Palmolive commercial ;)
I like what Linda said in her comment.
I use my hands a lot too and as long as they work,I'll try to be nice to them ;)
Nancy and the kitties
Fabulous post!
I immediately thought of your Letters From Home Quilt with your hand when I saw this post.
Rondi
rondiquilts@yahoo.com
I think hands tell stories. The tell the truth of who we are. This reminds me of a poster for a great environmental studies college... "Working Hands, Working Minds".
Have you ever read what hand models go through to keep their hands in "working" condition? It's awful. They can do almost nothing with their hands, wearing protective gloves,etc. I wouldn't last ten minutes. We have good honest hands and they serve us well. Let's be happy about that!!
Your hands make me think of a favorite tool or maybe cooking utensil. They've been used extensively and they don't look new, but you can tell that much creativity and love has passed through them and left them skilled. I try to think this way about my own hands, they have scars from my years in kitchens, but I would be lost without them.
Mum's hands, well some of the fingers, are wonky. Not straight, fat knuckles, but they show a lifetime of caring and work. As do yours.
They are not just tools.
They are TOOLS!
With sooooo many possibilities and applications that can create what the other great tool ( our brain ) can come up with.
They even remember how to do things that we forgot!!!
My Mum's hands were long and slender with beautiful nails and no arthritis at all. I inherited the curved inwards little finder from My Grandma, my Mum's Mum.I always admired those with long fingers who could span the piano keys so easily. However, I now know that every hand is precious, and can tell so many stories.
I have huge, bulging veins in my hands, also. I try not to think about it or the huge bags under my eyes. The joys of growing old!
I've seen these on Instagram and like that you explained in more detail here. We makers have useful hands. So much better than Miss Muffet's.
Great post. I loved my grandma’s hands (she taught me how to quilt) - knarled snd veiny, crooked, arthritic... creative and loving ... and I wish I had a photo of just her hands!
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