Chapter 1: How does one hold a wand? – The Hands

I welcome you like mad, my attentive and devoted students. Since we all met here to this early hour – ten in the morning is really no time to be up already – we can as well jump into the cold water and start with one of the most complicated parts of our body – the hand. And how much worship received the hand in the magical art throughout the centuries.

 

Just think of “The Magic Performing Hands” of Albrecht Duerer. And we shouldn’t forget in this context the beautiful representation of the hand over of the first ever wand from our Creator to Adam at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. This was conjured up by none other than the wonderful wizard Michelangelo.

 

In these two paintings as in others as well hands talk to us. They are a very important

part of our body if it comes to the expression emotions and involuntary gestures. They are more often than not an eyecatcher in our drawings. But not only this. They are as well a key to understanding the story behind. Our task is it now to discover this key from within.

 

 

 

 

Anatomy of the Hand

 

Let me start this part of the rather dry subject of anatomy with some carefully chosen and well thought-through words: Anatomical knowledge is no useless ballast for an artist!

 

In drawing nature is our model and anatomy is its foundation. Furthermore, anatomy is our tools of trade to create characters and moods and to stress what is important for us to express. Just look at the magical masterpiece of classical painting “Barnabas the Barmy teaching ballet to the Trolls” of the hand of one of my colleagues.

 

 

I think he rather belonged to the group of craziest who devoted themselves to our guild. But nevertheless, how much of its quality and class would the picture lose, how less expressive would it become did the hero still have all his extremities in the right order. Unfortunately for my cause he withdrew himself to the most far away corner in exhaustion. But perhaps you will be lucky enough in asking him to show himself in the forefront.

 

Anyway, this has to wait till later as we need to proceed with our anatomy lesson of the hand. I know that artists and those who want to become it are rather optical types of learning. Hence, to be able to present you the anatomical knowledge as vivid and graphic as possible I was taught the very complicated Revilo Structura Spell by the very gifted healer Madame Marlis Schubarth. It enables me to clear away the skin and muscles level by level to reveal what is hidden underneath.

 

Now that I have gone through the trouble of learning the spell I want to receive the applause that is always due after the first application of it. Therefore, let’s move on so that I can rake in the well-earned reward. REVILO STRUCTURA OSSI.

 

 

The Bones of the Hand

 

Just look, my attentive and devoted students. Down here we see the wrist. As you notice the wrist is a bone formation of two rows of little cubes. Attached to the outer row are five longish bones. They compose the metacarpus, the connection between the wrist down here and the fingers on the other side. Going by their shape they are called tube-shaped bones. This is also the kind of bone the fingers are made of. And as you can see yourselves we have three of these bones in every finger but only two in the thumb.

 

Usually we find these 27 bones in this exact order. But, I can tell you. Once I was sitting with a friend of mine all engrossed in our homework when she did a wave of her wand too many. The result to her hand was to say the least unusual. Picasso would have been proud had he drawn a hand like that. Unfortunately, my friend forgot in all the excitement what she had thought and done, or she would have invented that day the next most en vogue hex for a time being in school.

 

However, I stray and waste our precious time with nothing but twaddle while we should entrench ourselves in anatomy. Therefore, let’s rather dare a look on the joints.

 

Joints of the Hand

 

While the bones supply our body with a stable and solid framework, the joints between two or more bones enable us to move. And believe me when I say it is in general very good that movements are only there possible. However, one or two well-chosen words at the right place combined with a tiny flick of your wand and the one in front of you can flex his body on completely different places than just the joints. This spell is also used by professional rubber men in the circus so that they can look at their own butt easily.

 

Mentioning this I need to tell you of the one incident I took the liberty of using this hex on my best enemy and it was not for her to get a better grade in her gymnastic performance. This story is just too funny to miss it. But I better not go there as this story is more suitable for another kind of class. This class is about art and I digress once again from the subject. Where did we stop? Oh yes, we were talking about joints.

 

There is not one joint like the other. Joints vary especially in the amount of movement they allow. Some – called amphiarthrosis – are through the shape of the joining bones and the ligaments that strongly connected that they allow almost no movement at all. The joints of the palm belong to that group. That means for us artists that the slightly curved, wedge-shaped palm keeps almost the same in whatever position the hand is drawn. In the contrast to that the fingers with their many little joints are very flexible attached to the palm.

 

Of course, this can be changed easily with a nice, little curse that robs the joints of the fingers of their mobility as well. This is very cumbersome if you want to take hold of something. A masterpiece of the late-romantic period “Melancholy After the Once Again Elimination of the Flying Dutchmen at the World Cup” that is hung up in the broom cupboard of our institute.

It shows a marvellous depiction of the admittedly unsportsmanlike application of the curse.

 

The picture shows as well that muscles alone are of no help where the joints don’t allow any movement. But normally our joints are mobile and therefore we should look now at the muscles that belong to the hand.

 

Muscles of the Hand

 

Muscles are a subject that can drive every healer in training in insanity. At the time the last muscle is memorised with its origin and end, its nerve and function the first ones have slipped the brain again. These little bastards must be imposed with a natural Oblivisco Me Curse no remedy has yet been discovered against. This wouldn’t be that much of a problem as there are long tables with even the tiniest one listed in them. However, at times of exams the muscles are supposed to be all sunken in.

 

But it will not be of our concern to more than scratch the surface of the matter. And before we can start to occupy us with the subject – intensive or not – I need to find a way to add the muscles back to my bones. Only after this I can show them to you my attentive and devoted students. How was I supposed to do that? Oh yeah, I think I remember. That will do it. Now we are finally all set to start.

As you can see yourselves we really have only few muscles located right at the hand. Their meaty body would make the movement of the fingers and the thumb a difficult task. Instead we see a real jumble of tendons that transmit the muscles force onto the bones. But they are less interesting for us art enthusiasts. The muscle bodies that belong to these tendons only stand out against the surface of the forearm. Therefore we will leave them for a later lesson. Up to this time I should have been able to attach the muscles back in the right order to my arm. Since somehow the spell I thought I remembered earlier didn’t work quite right for me. I wonder what I missed out.

 

However, it went out perfectly for my hand. Therefore, look at the inside of it. These small hills underneath the thumb and the little finger are composed of additional muscles that make these two fingers more flexible than all the others. It is not exaggerated than I say that it were these muscles that made us more capable than any other monkey since they enable us to oppose the thumb to the fingers. And this is a position you need to hold and use tools like wands.

 

When we now turn our hand we look at a rather straight surface. At the back of the hand one can distinguish at the most the tendons of the finger extensors and some veins. It is not at all as individually shaped as the inside of the palm.

 

But it is better this way as you become restless. And gosh, just look at the time! We engaged ourselves in the theory much too long already. Let’s become practical. SKINE MANUS, ACCIO PENNA!

 

Anatomy in Arte – The True Magic

 

The time has come there we will start the true magic of painting. We will enter a world there a line creates a whole new universe. Our first creation will be a hand. It is not really that hard if we use what we have learnt while looking at the anatomy.

 

1. When we occupied ourselves with the bones of the hand we discovered that the palm is composed of many small bones that are connected tidily. Together they create a shape of a wedge. This is wider at the place the arm attaches to the hand and smaller at the side of the fingers. Since the bones are arranged in a slight curve the block resembles a shovel. The position of it in the space of the parchment determines the later posture of the hand in the picture. What are you waiting for? Start drawing wedges onto your parchment!
2. However, the palm is far from finished yet. Do you remember that I showed you the small hills underneath the thumb and the little finger? If you sketch them in you end up with the typical wavy landscape of the inside of the hand. Yes, that’s it. Well done!
3. The base of the thumb equals a triangle due to the shape of the bones, muscles and skin. So, add it immediately to the wedge on your parchment. The joints of the thumb resemble – looked at from the outside – a ball or an egg depending of the angle the joint is flexed. This shape is created by the round thickening of the bones towards the ends. Certainly, we can use this information as well for our drawing. Otherwise I hadn’t pestered you with it in the theoretical part of our lessons. Like in this model you can compose a thumb from the spheres of the joints and the cylinders of the bone-shafts. That was easy, wasn’t it?
4. Well, when you can now draw the fingers in any posture you like using the same instructions. Just take into account that the thumb is only divided into two segments there as the fingers have three segments each. Marvellous that completes our first ever hand created in this class. That means technically seen it is a hand.
5. However, our basic model is not completed yet. Just look at it my attentive and devoted students. Doesn’t it look to you a bit too mechanical? We need to change this. Hence, let your magic show up again. With a bit more rhythm and a lot more practice it will become a living hand telling your stories.

 

But wait! Before I can allow you call your hands into being you have to endure some more theory about proportions. After all this is as serious a class as any of your others. Just that it can be a lot more fun and means at least twice as much laughter.

 

So, let’s travel on memory lane back to the early beginnings of this class. There you learnt – or shall I better say there you heard me say – that the crucial shape of the hand is the palm. This part can assume a square or rectangular shape. From time to time one hears of magical accidents that have to a result that a hand inflates like a blow fish, rolls up like a folded carpet or takes on the shape of scissors.

 

 

These are very tragic stories. Therefore, be warned and pay attention to your own safety in dealing with your magic.

 

But in this early stages of our drawing experience we should concentrate and limit ourselves to the healthy and uncursed hand. And the palm of such a hand is squarely to rectangular shaped. This shape will be of importance in your divination class when it comes to palm reading in palmistry. I don’t want to spoil you the laugh there. So here in my subject the size and proportions of the palms we draw are our only concern. They are important since we can derive from that the proportions of the hand and from that the proportions of the whole body. How’s this possible? Just look:

 

-          The back of the hand at its greatest length (1-2) is as long as the middle finger (2-3).         -          Just let’s remain with the middle finger for a moment. Did you know that the rude gesture connected to it is as old as one of those English French wars? The French king ordered that immediately upon a French victory all English soldiers captured in fighting were to be relieved of their middle fingers so that they never again get into the predicament to pick up a sword again. The irony of history wanted it that the English won and paraded in front of the defeated French king sticking up the

            formerly endangered finger that was foreseen such a bad faith. Well, the English humour is legendary. I can’t believe I digressed again and told you this particular story while I just wanted to tell you that the lowest segment of the middle finger is half as long as the whole finger. The other two segments divide the other half evenly. The fingernail is again half as long as the last segment. Who has followed this train of thought and can tell me how long the fingernail is in relation to the whole finger? Hey, pay attention, this is important. Just because I stray once in a while you aren’t allowed to let your thoughts wander as well.

 

 

 

 

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Let’s go on with the proportions. The two fingers left and right next to the middle finger have almost the same length. But the little finger ends as you can see even before the ring finger’s last segment starts. The thumb on the other side of the hand seems even shorter. It ends with the first segment of the forefinger. But the thumb starts deeper down on the palm than the other fingers what compensates for the early end.

 

 

 

 

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OK, before you all fall asleep in front of me let’s become a bit more bodily active. Put your hand on your face so that the wrist is placed on your chin. Your fingers will reach up to your forehead. The tip of your middle finger will eventually even touch the hairline if your hands aren’t as tiny as mine.

 

 

 

 

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Now turn your hand so that it covers your forehead. The little finger should rest on the eyebrows. Now you will realise that your index finger lines up with the hairline.

 

 

 

 

-          The same works when you put your hand over your mouth. The little finger ends with the chin while the forefinger touches the base of the nose. This gives us the first hint that the forehead and the region from the base of the nose to the chin have to have the same length. However, this will be one of the little mysteries we will discover in our lesson about the head.

 

Yes, these are quite a few facts. But they will be really helpful, at the latest in the next lessons when I will start as it is customary in art to state the length of body parts in head length. When you will be able to attribute them to the size if the hands. Just had the unknown artist of the portrait “The Screaming Gabrielle on the Mountain” – another one of the invaluable treasures of the wizard world’s art repertoire – remember his basic course in hand proportions. Perhaps the poor gal could move her hands today and do so would be able to visit other portraits around.

 

 

 

 

But the way she is painted her hands are so huge and heavy that she can’t even lift them an inch from her already flattened face. However, if I think about it a bit longer this proportional individualism has its good and could therefore be done on purpose. In her time Gabrielle was known for her nerve-racking screams those she used to torture her environment. They are limited to a bearable level through the over-sized hands on her face.

 

Thereby, something is proven that I told you my attentive and devoted students already in the introductory speech to these lessons. Anatomy is a tool to create characters and moods and to point out important stuff. Gabrielle thought it important to preserve her sweet appearance for the generations after her. The artist on the other hand didn’t believe her screams worth surviving until eternity. Therefore, practice so that you as well can apply your knowledge calculatedly and to the broader good of the society.

 

Assignment of the Lessons

 

Start practicing here and now. The time is come to bring your first hand and many, many thereafter to life on your parchment. So, let’s start.

 

1. And, how does one hold a wand? I prefer the classical position and it looks like this:   

    

2. Practice other hands whatever they do or hold.    

3. And besides this: Draw a pair of hands that tell me a story. For your inspiration you can see here two pieces from my quill. They tell you about the difference between candid offering and undisguised demand. And what will be your story?    

                             

 

I can’t wait to receive your feet-long rolls of parchment!