Geometry of the hand and body... at one time, human beings were so deeply involved in the exploration of the world through their hands that there was no need for conscious consideration of what everyone knew instinctively from their own direct experience. Now we have become largely isolated from the development of hand skills. But for those who want to draw or create, and whose use of hands has been limited to brushing teeth and poking the qwerty, a look at hand tricks and the basic geometry of the hands and body may help your hands to act with greater control and intelligence.

The idea in education has been that hand skills are only for dumb people. The consequence is that we have a lot of smart people who aren't actually as smart as they like to think they are, and a few minutes with a pencil or scissors can be devastating to trumped up and inflated egos barely able to cope with unexpected encounters with physical reality.

The illustration above is of a very simple thing, pivoting the hand on the bone of the wrist to create a smoothly drawn arc. It can move from a radius to an ellipse by gradually extending the first finger and thumb during rotation. By changing the pivot point from the wrist to the elbow, the shoulder or a combination of all three, larger simple or complex curves can be drawn. This is something you can try for yourself with paper or directly on wood and with either pencil or pen. It is much better that you experiment and discover things for yourself through your own observations of human geometry and thought. So please don't just take my word for things. Start simple and experiment. There are other tips on tool use and hand consciousness presented earlier in the blog, and I welcome readers to contribute your own tips for increasing hand smarts. In the coming days or months, I will be adding a few more of my own.