Artist Hands

So fanastyfinder posted a video on her YT a while ago just talking about her hands and I was pretty inspired to do the same thing.
I don't really have a way to record drawing or just my hands on video and honestly, knowing me it feels like if I tried to do that it would go on for like 4 hours haha. I can talk a lot. So I thought it would be better to just write out an essay about it. At first I wanted to do it just for myself, but I found myself just noting things about my hands in my head and never just sitting down to write about it. Then I finally got the inspiration to try to paint them instead! And then I'd have the perfect way to show my own hands in as much detail as I could manage and then I'd have this space down here to just vomit out as much as I can think of to write about them.

A bit about the painting itself before I move on to the brain vomit:
I actually struggled a bit with picking the colours I wanted. At this stage I'm really comfortable with picking skin tones, especially in normal lighting like I have here, but I struggled here because I kept staring at my hands (my reference) and I wanted to be realistic. So I couldn't pick my usual 4-5 colours and blend out, in real life you literally have hundreds of different colours and hues even in the same area. So my biggest struggle was how much purple, how much pink? I found that without the purple, my skin ton ended up looking far more tan than it is, and that it didn't sufficiently showcase the 'blush' level of my knuckles and fingertips.

On to the essay!
So, I guess the easiest place to start talking about my hands would be with the jewelry I wear. I wear two rings, both on my middle fingers (so I can show them to people, //flashes middle fingers at you//,_{was a quote I read when I was like 10 that I found hilarious. It's not really the reason but it is a funny little thing to say.}), a watch and a hair tie. Starting from the hair tie, its on my left wrist. I wore it alongside my watch on my right wrist for about a year when I wore a charm bracelet all the time. You can see that configuration here:

The charm bracelet still holds a lot of sentimental value to me, as it was a gift from my group of friends from Brazil that they gave to me when I moved, but I didn't like wearing it. It's made of silver and the charms aren't anything to snuff at either, so it felt too nice to be wearing it around. Around 2 years after I got the bracelet (where I never wore it, instead displaying it in my room), my brother and grandmother gifted me a charm each, my grandma a silver piece with roses sculpted in (her name is Rosa) and my brother one with some amethysts in it (his birthstone and my favourite gem). I hadn't really wanted them, like I said I didn't want to wear the bracelet, but it seemed like such a waste not to. So I wore it for around a year and never fully got used to it. Eventually, the clasp started coming undone every once in a while, so I took that as an excuse to stop wearing it. My mum and brother tried to talk me into wearing it again by buying me a new one or one of those charms that connects in two places and has a little chain in between, acting like a security net sort of thing, but I don't really want to wear it. I got another charm for it Christmas 2015, which I wore on a chain around my neck for a few months but I haven't gone back to wearing the charm bracelet, instead my left wrist is reserved for a hair tie.
Continuing on the note of the hair tie, I went 5 months without having it there. That's because I went from having hair that went down to my butt to having hair too short to tie in any capacity. I lent away the tie that I'd had and didn't find a need to replace it until like a month ago. I still don't put my hair up nearly as often.
On my right wrist you see a watch. You'll excuse me for being a bit lazy in rendering the watch in the painting, but truth be told this particular watch doesn't have the slightest significance to me. I've worn a digital watch on my right wrist since I was 11 years old, and whenever I've gone without it just feels odd. I got one from my dad at age 11, I wanted a digital one not an analogue one for ease of use. When I was like 15 it was in shambles. Barely held together. Once the strap finally broke off I decided that it was time to get a replacement. I got a Casio Baby G black watch with a green face. I got it black and green because it matched with my old one, even if the new one was a lot bulkier. Its the watch that I drew in the drawing where I had the charm bracelet. Sadly, it's broken now. It's water resistant but not so much so since I had the battery changed. In June of 2016, I jumped in the river and on top of losing my glasses and anklet (which I recovered thanks to flirting with some nearby scuba divers, it's a funny story if I tell it with details, my friends wanted to murder me) water got in the watch and it hasn't worked since. I still have it, just like I still have the one I got when I was 11 in a drawer, I just can't wear it. Introducing: The watch I'm wearing in the painting!
It cost a grand total of 11$ in my local drug mart and it was the only digital watch they had. I've been wearing it for 4 months and it tells the time and beeps at 8am for me. I'll never stop missing the beep that my first watch gave every hour or how I could use my casio watch as a tiny flashlight for a bit.
Next up:rings! On my left hand, I have a golden band with 4 little diamonds inserted into it with white gold. That sounds extremely obnoxious and unnecessary, even to me. Honestly, I don't think I'd ever pick out this sort of ring for myself (not because of the design, I love the plain and streamline design of it, but because of the materials). It is tradition however. As a Latin American girl by birth and upbringing, that I get a golden band for my 15th birthday. And so I did. My grandma Rosa gifted it to me when I turned 15, she sold and melted some of the old jewels that she's had stashed away for decades to buy and adjust this ring for me. Traditionally, it's supposed to be worn on the ring finger of the right hand to show that a girl has entered womanhood and is available to start dating. I already had my ring on my other hand though, and I didn't want to wear it on my ring finger of my left hand, so middle finger it is (also so I can show it to people,,, jkjk). Originally, I hadn't wanted to wear this ring either. Much like the charm bracelet, it's a bit too fancy for me and I didn't want to lose it or anything. My brother convinced me to wear it though, said that it cost my grandma a lot of her old jewels and he wouldn't allow that to be the case for me not to wear it. I haven't taken it off for more than a shower since my 15th birthday.
ON MY OTHER HAND WE HAVE: My brother's worst enemy and my oldest companion! So this thing here I've been wearing without taking it off since I was 10 years old. If I'd done the video and not a drawing, I'd be able to show you how my finger literally grew around this ring. So, despite this thing being the bane of my brother's existence, he was the one to actually give it to me, along with a woven bracelet that I wore until it broke. He and my mum used to go to these hippie fairs on Sundays when we lived in Brazil. No way was I going to wake up before noon on a Sunday, plus accessories and hippie style stuff never interested me too much, but they always brought back something or another for me. On their first trip there my brother got me this ring. It's made of either steel or aluminium, I'm not sure. Its larger than more female rings, doesn't have a gem and and only has very minuscule engraved designs on it that I wasn't able to translate into the painting they're so small. It's kind of a mix of a Chinese stylized sea horse and an akatsuki cloud design, there's 9 of these little designs all around. My brother is a bit of a pretentious snob about things. If it's not silver it's trash. If its not the ABSOLUTE BEST GRADE ANYTHING EVER, it's trash. When he was 15 and he bought this for me, he hadn't yet settled into that attitude, but since he turned around 19, he's fully embraced his hipster-y snobbiness, and is out for me ring. I can't take it off around him, I really can't. But yeah, as much as my brother hates on this thing, this ring is probably the most precious thing I wear, even counting my other ring and whatever necklace or anything I wear. I think it's because it's the only thing that's survived from my original set of accessories that I wore when I was 10 and decided that I wanted to wear them. All the other items I had chosen for myself then have since broke. I think that if they hadn't, I'd still be wearing them. This ring has seen so much of the world with me, and I don't want to let it go.

After all this, see what I mean about not wanting to make a video on this? I really would talk for 4 hours. I wonder if anyone's read this far. Moving on! I guess i should talk about my nails then. So I used to bite my nails as a kid. I stopped when I was around 7 years old, but I ended up scratching a friend while we were playing and he bled and started to cry and I felt so remorseful that I started biting them again. When I was around 12 my mum decided that that was enough with the nail biting and started bribing me with manicures. In Brazil getting manicures is really cheap and a very nice social experience. One way or another, it worked. And it started the habit of having my nails painted. I usually had them done twice a month, but when we moved away from Brazil, I stopped getting manicures. I'm sure that if I'd wanted to keep getting them, I could of but I was so homesick for Brazil that I didn't really want to. Plus, with all the teenage angst of moving, I'd picked up the guitar a lot more seriously (strictly speaking, i've been playing guitar since I was 10, but besides learning the open chords and some scales, I didn't take it too seriously and never practiced, when I was 14 and just about to move I started playing a lot more in order to cope with the move, then I stopped playing agin when I was 16 because I took classes for it and got burnt out and have picked it up again in the last year). Anyway, I got out of the habit of painting my nails and instead fitted my hands for guitar.
In short, none of my nails will ever be the same size, ever. Here's why: on my left hand, I can let my thumb grow as long as I want, and I actually want it as long as I can keep it without it breaking for lid opening purposes (and specifically because I always use it to open shit, it always breaks) my pointer, ring and middle fingers need to be quite short for playing chords. My pointer and middle in particular. My pinky and ring fingers have a little more slack because they're at an angle when I use them for chords. Plus, I've found that the nails on my pointer and ring finger grow more in like a shovel shape I like to call it. It's wider and flares out, while my pinky and ring fingers curve in with a more prominent C curve. I like my ring and pinky nails better, because of their shape, but I don't really notice one way or another. On my right hand, the thumb, pointer and ring finger need to be kept shorter because I like finger picking chords a lot, and if I have my nails longer it ends up making me not be as precise with what strings I pluck. With the ring and pinky fingers however, on my right hand i like them to be as long as possible because I use them to strum. I always carry like 4 pics around with me but I don't really ever play with a pick hahah.
So that's really it for me nails. Half of them a completely different shape from the other half and none of them ever the same length.
Next up I guess would be my knuckles. I crack my knuckles, yes I know it's bad for me. It used to make me really uncomfortable but when I was 13, my dad got me a Wii with Guitar Hero 5. Until then I'd always played GH with my neighbour on his PS2 with the controllers, but since I got the guitar I wanted to get good with it. Only my sheer stubbornness let me learn and get to the point where I could play on expert level comfortable, the consequence of which being that my fingers cracked when I like stretched and wiggled them. My wrists also crack when I like face my hands up and then pivot them towards me from the side my pinkies are on. Anyway, I got in the habit of cracking my knuckles and wrists after obsessive amounts of guitar hero playing. 
My mum always tells me I have really soft hands, but I don't really believe her. I think they're about average. I get callouses on my fingertips from playing guitar and though I never really get sweaty palms, I do think my hands get dryer than the rest of my skin, especially now in winter. I quite dislike putting lotion on my hands though, so I rather they stay that way. I think in a few years now I'm going to have to get over my dislike for skin lotions and stuff since the sooner you start treating wrinkles the longer it'll take for them to show up haha.
In terms of injuries I've never really had anything serious on my hands. I do have the terrible habit of always pulling my hangnails, causing them to bleed and then picking at the scabs. The only times I ever paint my nails these days (and for like the past 4 years) is when I've picked at my scabs and hangnails so much that I have a scab on both sides of all my nails. If I paint them then, I end up leaving it alone so it can heal. I guess it's sort of a nervous habit? Like I don't bite my nails anymore but I bite at the hangnails? idk, not healthy in any case. 
My hands are I think my favourite part of my body. Like, I love my hair a lot, but sometimes I just can't deal with it and it's giving me a bad time. I love my face, it's like always there for me when I need a face and it does all my face things. I love my ears because I've managed to keep my hearing A-okay even when my eyesight fails me and my sense of smell gets distorted like you wouldn't believe from allergies. I love my brain because it's a pretty good brain, but I don't love any of these things as much as I love my hands. Even when they're having a bad day, i usually end up blaming my brain over them. 
I always reference my hands most whenever I draw hands so one could say that I've drawn them a LOT, but drawing them with all their oddities and inconsistencies was a lot of fun. And even writing this monstrosity of word vomit about them was really refreshing and therapeutic in a sense. If anyone read this far, thank you! I hope you found it at least somewhat entertaining haha.