Uni PIN fine-liner, 0.8mm, on card.
A perennial subject for the artist who does not have a model present is his free hand and is always good for an absorbing twenty minutes. There are difficulties however, in that the hand is usually closer than one would like it to be and of course hands are notoriously difficult to draw. In this sketch, the problematic areas are to my mind, associated mainly with the thumb, not least because I failed to distinguish sufficiently between the web of the thumb, and the light that was showing through the ‘tunnel’ created by the curled fingers.
The thumb is in fact a deceptive organ. It appears to be shorter than the fingers, but that is because the base knuckle of the thumb is hidden down near the wrist. If, by probing around at the base of the thumb and wiggling it, you can locate the base knuckle of the thumb and measure its length from there, you will find that it is not shorter than your longest finger, and is more mobile. The length is disguised to about one half of its true length by the web of flesh that bridges between the thumb and the palm. We can mistakenly think of the thumb as having only the two knuckles or joints we easily see, instead of the three it does have, and being shorter than it is. This inadequate and inaccurate concept of the thumb can then create a difficulty when it comes to drawing the hand.