Hands Against the Wall

The shadow is projected, not drawn bigger. The flame is a point in the room at a known distance from the wall; your hand is somewhere between them. Every point of the hand is cast along the straight line from the flame through it and onto the wall, which works out as a magnification of D / (D − d) about the flame’s position — where D is the flame’s distance from the wall and d is your hand’s. Right against the wall the shadow is life-size. Halfway, it is twice the size. Nine tenths of the way, ten times. That is why moving your hand a few centimetres near the candle throws a wolf across the whole room.

The soft edge is real too. A flame is not a point, it is a small bright thing, so every edge has a penumbra whose width grows with the same ratio — and that is why a shadow held close to the wall has a hard edge and one held near the candle is a vague dark cloud. Both the blur and the growth come off the same two numbers here; nothing is faked to look right.

The eight hands are drawn here, as silhouettes, from the shapes everybody’s hands eventually find. Nothing is photographed and nothing is traced.