mrs bardhol / take 1.

As my blogging buddy Craig so eloquently and persistently put it a week ago, "What is it about hands?" Indeed. Armed with this rhetoric, so phrased almost as to assume flummoxation on the part of the recipient, and i myself being smug in my assurance of mutual flummoxation, took an opportune time after sketching these to ask my lovely wife, mrs bardhol, "Honey? What IS it about hands anyway, gash dag it!?" Without supplying her lungs with even one single breath of oxygen, so necessary to the precious ebb and flow of life, the little dear imparted to me a simple solitary word: "Perspective". By Jiminy's spats, i thought, she's correct! It's not too hard with practice to draw a decent looking you-can-tell-it's a-hand hand. But dynamic, solid, dimensional-looking hands? Forget you ever asked about it! First of all, look at your hand. Disgusting, isn't it? Should have washed when you had the chance, shouldn't you? Well never mind that. See how it has all this topography to it? There are all these slopes and valleys and ridges and tendons and huh?.. what th' heck are those things... and, well, you get the idea. It also has five fingers extending from it which are a kind of anatomy no one walking in the park was ever yet tempted to draw, i can tell you. Now, to add to all this difficulty, strike a pose with a lot of knuckles and claws sticking out everywhere. Go ahead. I won't call the police. Hold it a foot or 2 in front of your face, there you go. Now look at it, closing first one eye and then the other. See! Two different perspectives, and there you are, trying to draw them both, and looking like a tiddleywink!
The solution? I don't know. I wouldn't recommend closing one eye while sketching the hand, as that can only lead to a visit to the family physician. Or from, depending on what kind of mess you get yourself into. Myself, i tried to look for landmarks i could reference for ease of sketch, and i found a few(lower left corner); this may or may not work for you. Any comments or suggestions? You know i love to get them. And for those of you who have stayed for, and one hopes enjoyed, the main course, i give you:

dessert!

ca. 2001

See kids? Just look what happens when you stop drawing. This is the sort of crap i used to start, work on for a year or two, then drop like a bad habit, back when i thought i'd be one of the great illustrators of our time. i guess i'm posting it here, more or less like everything else i put up, as an act of self-flagellation. Theoretically, public scrutiny of my flaws should force me to work harder and produce better work so that eventually we'll all be able to look back at these days and laugh, as at so many embarrassing haircuts. It's sad how little i've progressed in six years but i can still make the next six productive. Right? Right.

And don't ask me what the heck is happening with the chair --i don't know!

bloody hands

my bro.