Family Hands - How can I improve these?

I was inspired by this photograph and decided to take a series of photos depicting 'family hands'; my mum's, my dad's and my dog's.






I cropped out the stitching on my fleece, the other version is here if anyoen wants to see.

I then took some with B&W film







The processing isn't great (I did it myself at college) and apparently my scanner hates B&W prints.

Any ideas on how I can improve them?

Thanks.

I worked on the one I thought had the best composition & interest. Your exposure was the best on this photo also so I worked on adding contrast, cleaning up the dust specks and sharpening the image slightly, adding more "character" lines. What do you think?

I like what Bob has done

And I think your lower 3 pics could be improved by having more above the hands in the frame too, so more like the original example you posted.