Kate’s left handed challenge

[KatherineBoyd]

Fell hard yesterday and my dominant arm is kablooey. I use my left hand for lots of things, but not drawing or writing.

[PaulDidier]

Hi Katherine. I certainly sympathize with you. About 7 years ago I developed excruciating pain in my right hand that was so severe I couldn’t hold a pencil. Lots of doctors just ran tests and said “no arthritis, no tendinitis, it looks like you just wore it out. Time to find another career.” So for several years I worked really hard to learn to write and draw left handed. I won’t say I ever got as good at it as with my right hand but I did get much better than I ever thought I would. I also think it was awesome for getting me to use the right side of my brain. A couple of years ago I found a doctor who thought the other doctors gave up too soon. After a lots of treatments and a minor surgery my right is about 90% of what it was before. But I think I draw much better overall. All in all I see the experience as a big win.

I urge you to begin drawing with your non-dominant hand. When your dominant hand is well I think you’ll find you draw MUCH better after using your non dominant hand for a while. For years many of my teachers urged their students to do this. Almost no one did it. It’s too embarrassing to draw that badly in front of a class of students! Now I see that if I’d sucked it up and done it back then I’d have been a much better artist now.

This sounds like an awesome challenge for you! It might inspire others to do it even if their dominant hand is in good shape.

[KatherineBoyd]

Thanks for the encouragement Paul! Typing is also a challenge.

[Paula Simoes]

I am surprised with this! I ruined my hand with the first coloured pencils i tryed  and had to stop drawing for 2 months. I was stupid … I like this “doodling” that came from your left hand…Its something that could have come out of my right hand… my dominant hand…I will think very seriously about this.

[DeanGiberson]

I like how you are focusing on the shadow shapes while learning to control the line with your left hand.

[PaulDidier]

That looks a lot like my first attempts at being left handed! Another thing I did was to get some lined paper and do the grade school “learn how to write the alphabet” drills they have kids do in kindergarten 0r first grade. You know aaaaaaabbbbbbbccccccc etc. Do it very slow. Pretend you’re a little kid learning from the beginning. I found this helpful because you can see improvement much more quickly doing this than drawing. It helps you feel encouraged.

 

[KatherineBoyd]

Thanks for encouragement!  My normal style is pretty sketchy, right handed. I like paying more attention to the object than the drafting. My left hand is  complaining, but it’ll learn, darn it.

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