Sometimes when I have a bit of extra clay I model a hand or a foot, never a pair for some reason. My own limbs are the model, so the hands are chubby, the feet are peasant-like with bunions.
I make the palm or full foot first, excavate little hollows for the phalanges, then add the digits, long clay fingers or bulky toes, instead of just squishing them into a form. I add lumps for the ankle and wrist protuberances, and for the knuckles, then smoothe them out. If I were I think about onogeny replicates phylogeny, I guess I would make some fins first, the some chubby little Mickey Mouse hands then evolve them into fine fingers.
This hand was coming along, but before I finished smoothing out the skin to make a lovely ideal hand, I dropped it on the dusty floor of the studio. It wrenched into a mature twisted appendage, wrinkly, knarly.
Watershed Clayworks 