Friday, September 9, 2016

hands

This has bugged me since forever. Well, eight years and it seems like forever. Time's not my bag! I'm a crackpot about this, admittedly, so there, I said it. I admit that it's me and I don't expect anybody else to be bugged in my way. My reason for being bugged comes at me two ways.

The first is getting proportions for Egyptian figures. I thought this up as a teen. I'd get stuck on the size of hands when drawing figures, too large, too small, uneven size on the same figure, feet not being the same size, and so forth. I wondered, well, how do I tell? How do I know how large to make them?

I used my own hand for proportion to my own face. I held up my hand palm at the wrist where it bends and placed my palm on my own chin to discover for myself by using myself as model where my own fingertips touched. My own fingertips touch the top of my forehead.

Try it. I don't think this works with women. I think women have smaller hands.

Try it, I said.

Try it with your foot.  Bottom of your own palm to heel of your own foot, where do your fingertips touch? Your fingertips touch at the ball of your big toe, the bump where that bends for your toe. That's where. And if they don't, then face it, you're a freak.

Okay? Body proportion for art. Specifically for Egyptian figures. And now that matter is settled. No more problem thereafter.

So there's that.

The second reason for being a crackpot about hand proportion is through sign language. Obviously a person's hands become a focus of attention. If the hands are unusually large then it sticks out because they're drawing attention to their hands throughout. If a man's hands are too small, it sticks out. If a woman's hands are too large, it's like Seinfeld, she has man-hands and an entire episode is developed from it and in a Seinfeld kind of crockpot way.

For example, this woman is saying the idea of "acute."


It's not much. It's not a complaint either. But it's noticeable because the hands are so important. The hands are the focus of attention. If I didn't notice then I'd be unobservant. No offense to the nice lady who teaches so many so much for so long. Good job. Well done. But I'm making a point here and I need a counterpoint to complete it. 

So there's that and that. 

Two things. 

Since Trump entered the presidential race much has been made of the size of his hands, a joke that appeared in National Lampoon and was driven by Trump's personality that guaranteed a reaction. Teasers knew they draw a reaction reliably and this teasing was carried forward to present day election, and true to form Trump did respond bringing great joy to his teasers. So that it is even mentioned in Republican debates, and not only the size of his hands but the presumed size of his penis based on the size of his hands. Trump even mentioning it did make him appear un-presidential. Much of this was made. Very much. But only to his teasing detractors. And this extended joke went on for so long that eventually it said more about his hand-obsessed crackpot detractors than it does about Trump.

Even yesterday on a post to a British site the issue of Hillary Clinton's health came up. The video of her coughing a throat lozenge into a glass of water (They're obsessed with American politics, their own being so inconsequential, I suppose, and their unearned sense of superiority makes the subject irresistible. It's obnoxious to an extreme.) The discussion was reasonably questioning her health as candidate even though it's none of their business. Unless they intend to vote illegally, a reasonable assumption. Or have money in the game. They just strongly prefer a liberal prevail no matter what. No matter how gross the candidate. For once they were all being reasonable. Until one commenter with nothing useful to say chimed in, "Trump has small hands." And that's all the idiot knows. That's all the dope has to say.

And all the while for eight years I've heard nobody mention Obama's feminine hands. Obama has delicate undersized hands. And he waves them around so much that they're noticeable as any sign language speaker. Yet apparently this hasn't bothered anyone. While it does bother me, and not just a little. Not just disproportionately undersized hands, not just delicately structured hands, actually feminine hands on a man and that weirds me out and always has. I admit that I'm a crackpot. So what. I don't go waving my hands around him, nor make jokes about people's hands. I just privately accept my own crackpot attitude. Except Trump has brought all this to the surface.

Here's what I'm talking about. Any video will do. Usually hands in front of the body will be drawn and photographed larger by foreshortening. Here his hands are held close to his chest but the proportion test I devised works when he's photographed with arm extended toward the camera in a "stop" hand signal. Boys know from comic books the hand will be much larger than the head. Even the foreshortened head behind the foreward extended arm does not overcome Obama's lady-hands syndrome.

This combined with his hissing sibilants has made him impossible to listen to. For eight miserable years. Those two shortcomings amount to being addressed negatively by a creampuff bully. He'd be first to be beat up if he tried his lecturing outside of politics.

This key frame is from a clip of Himself overseas describing Americans as lazy. But he's projecting himself again upon hardworking Americans. Such an incredibly antagonistic dope. Not a leader at all. Not a leader, a malevolent force foisted upon us by Democrat party. His authority derived from his unearned office alone.

Try this with your own hand to your own face and see what I mean.


Incidentally, I was listening to Japanese students who were engaged in a cultural work exchange. They paid to holiday work on a Wyoming ranch. The Japanese were interested in living as cowboys for awhile and experience the American West. Their primary misconception about life on a ranch and about American work life in general is how hard American actually work. "This is hard!" The group of young men laughed at being so wrong. They've been told all their lives that Americans are lazy and they learned firsthand how hard Americans work. 

Obama has no idea how hard Americans work, nor how much they experienced the work reward diminish under his administration. Hillary too. It's why she can so breezily suggest more taxes. He honestly believes that all Americans are lazy and work averse as he is.

And he has small hands. 

Genuinely small delicate lady hands. A hands swap with his wife would be hand-improvement for both. She more feminine and he more masculine.

18 comments:

AllenS said...

I can't think of one job that Obama could do.

Evi L. Bloggerlady said...

AllenS, he can gently jerk off our enemies with his lady hands so they are temporarily appeased?

rhhardin said...

Household hand tip.

Kleenexes were good for drying hands, better than paper towels in fact.

They absorb all but the smallest amount of water, which then dries out in ten seconds.

I've stopped buying paper towels entirely.

windbag said...

Sweet Hands.

We have a painting in the living room that has always bothered me because the hands of the subject (11-ish girl) are wrong. No one else has ever commented on it, and I don't want to spoil their enjoyment of the painting, but...it's just not right.

Chip Ahoy said...

Look at the Asian guy sitting behind Obama with his hand to face. His face is tilted so it's a bit foreshortened. And so is his hand. Substitute his nose for his index finger, it looks the correct length. At any rate, the guy sitting behind him has ordinary hands. Even his are larger than Obamas.

Notice a lot of paintings in museums have set contrived hand configurations. Often the master paints the composition and the face then turns it over to their apprentice to finish the hands. What a ripoff! You expect the master does the whole thing, but he doesn't. Hands are standard. They're for the trainees. The master is simply above painting all those hands. This is historical fact.

The Dude said...

As a sculpture guy I have paid attention to hands. Take Rodin's Burghers of Calais, for example. It has been written that Camille Claudel, who was Rodin's model, girlfriend and collaborator suggested that the hands of the burghers be made oversize, and indeed they are.

Daniel Chester French sculpted Lincoln for the Lincoln monument. Some say that Lincoln's hands form an "A" and an "L" in ASL, although that issue remains unsettled.

I sculpted my own hands, made them twice life size. I did a series of them, split finger fast ball, the pointing hand sign, and several others. They are huge. So are the sculptures.

edutcher said...

Hands can be tough to draw. Hitler never got admitted to art school because he couldn't do them.

AllenS said...

I can't think of one job that Obama could do.

Hand job?

(had to...)

Chip Ahoy said...

Michelangelo's David has way oversized hands as well.

Evi L. Bloggerlady said...

Michelangelo exaggerated portions of David to make him look more "natural" from the viewer's perspective and to emphasis the tension of the composition (David just before engaging Goliath).

But he under-emphasized a different part.

edutcher said...

That was out of respect to Hellenic tradition.

Large different parts were thought to convey a person not in control of himself, not the model of moderation all Hellenes strived to be.

Small was good.

The Dude said...

There is a sculpture continuum from Michaelangelo through Canova, Bernini, Carpeaux up to Rodin. Each great in their own way, each learning from their predecessors.

One can go back even further to the Roman copies of ancient Greek sculptures, who in turn learned to carve marble from the Cycladic culture, which was separate from the great stone carving tradition of ancient Egypt.

But that timeline breaks down at WWI - Rodin died around that time and ugliness became fashionable, followed by abstract expressionism, which was kind of a talent-free version of German Expressionist sculpture, some of which was very good.

Now, piles of garbage are considered sculpture. How far we have fallen.

edutcher said...

Where I worked, which prided itself on its collection of modern art, there was a mayonnaise jar full of rocks.

Art.

More like Art Lipschutz.

ricpic said...

It doesn't bother me that the Brits are obsessed by our politics, perhaps even in a contemptuous manner. The fact is that without Brit coverage hardly any actual news would get through the MSM screening out of such.

MamaM said...

Kleenexes were good for drying hands, better than paper towels in fact.

Better for noses too.

ricpic said...

There's nothing better than a Kleenex when you're drippy
Unless it be clean white sox after you showery.








That's right, I'm here all day, just to bug you!

Methadras said...

That picture of Obama you used makes him look like such a fag. Oh wait.

ndspinelli said...

I'm not very cultured but I did enjoy the Rodin sculptures I saw as I walked through the Stanford campus.

The Dude said...

Stanford has a great sculpture collection strewn about the campus. I used to ride my bicycle up there, look at things like Alber's Wall, the Henry Moore, Rodin and so on, then ride home. It was a 25 mile round trip and admission was free.