When I'm posing figures, I spend a lot of time trying to get myself into the position I'm tying to put the model in, and working out which of my joints is bending which way. That's how I discovered that Mungo is right - there's no way to twist your hand without twisting your lower arm - unless you dislocate it! (And I won't go that far, not even for Art's sake!). I find that most poses start from the hips, and that it's important to balance the figure on either side of the vertical (so they don't fall over!) - eg, if the hip is rotated to the left, the rest of the body needs to rotate over to the right, so there is equal weight on each side (although of course there are gradations in this - if the head, for example, is also bent to the left, then the body needs to go even more left, and so on). If course, if your figure is SUPPOSED to be falling over, this doesn't apply! Also, as far as the head goes - heads don't always point the same way as the eyes - if you fix the eyes on a point, you can bend the head and neck without changing where the eyes seem to be looking. Makes all the difference to portraits!