I went to an art school for college so I spent a lot of my time drawing. I remember in a particular anatomy of drawing course that we were asked to draw our own hands as a home work assignment. It was a deeply thorough assignment as we were instructed to start literally from the inside out. We were asked to start by drawing the many bones of the hand, then on an overlaid pieces of semi transparent paper we moved on to the muscles, and eventually to the outer skin.
This class was where I really learned how to draw the human form and of course hands, which are notoriously one of the hardest body parts to draw. I remember this hand homework assignment because my teacher was very good at explaining how to understand the proportions of the body and how to translate that to an accurate drawing - so I thought I did a good job and was very proud of my drawing.
Durring the class critique another student began his critique of my piece and ultimately complained that it looked like I made the fingers too long. I protested and held up my hand to the drawing and everyone agreed that it was pretty accurate. The class laughed it off and joked about my long fingers as they moved on to the next piece.
This was one of those weird moments where I suddenly felt very conscious of my own hands and not necessarily in a bad way but I was just made very aware of them.
Anyways - hands in art are one of my favorite motifs so I've included a few of my favorite hand drawings and paintings in this post. I especially love the Egon Schiele sketch and the poster for "You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger."