I’ve mentioned my arthritis problems and I experienced complete frustration last week when we were given the opportunity to meet at a sketcher’s house to draw while rain fell outdoors. On this day my hand was not cooperating and I could not draw without a lot of pain.
Now I like watching other people draw but doing it all day becomes a bit much. What to do, what to do. One of the sketchers laughed and said, “Use your other hand,” to which I said, “I have a hard enough time drawing with this one, holding up my left-hand. But, the more I got frustrated the more I thought it might not be a bad idea.
As it turns out, I’m really horrible at drawing with my right hand. My eyes still worked so I could identify proportions and relationships but getting my hand to put the lines where I wanted them, not so good. Anyways, here’s the results. In case you can’t recognize it, it’s a glass bowl with some fruit in it. I gave up entirely when it came to hatching; as a righty I failed completely at that.
Sometimes late at night when I’m really tired but I still feel like sketching, I draw with my right hand just for fun. I think of it in the same way as blind contour drawing, and then all the pressure is off. While not my best work in the conventional sense, I’ve gotten interesting results. If you don’t try to draw as well as you can with your “real” drawing hand, it can be fun. I hope your arthritis improves soon — along with the weather!
I confess that using my right hand wasn’t much fun for me, but it was an interesting experiment. It taught me how separate our “seeing” is from our “doing”, which is something that the catch phrase of “hand-eye coordination” doesn’t begin to capture.
The arthritis should improve in concert with better weather. We finally hit 20C yesterday, with bright sun. My hand was fine, or mostly fine. I got a solid, fun location session in yesterday (May 16), which is ridiculously late for a ‘first’. I have a hard time complaining, however, as a lot of people in Quebec are dealing with flooded houses and the like.
Hubby and I attended a Danny Gregory workshop in which one of the exercises was drawing our hand with our other hand. It turned out better than I expected–ar least it looked like a hand. I sometimes wonder if I should be practicing sketching with my non-dominant hand. I am 72, and my mother had a stroke at 79 which somewhat debilitated her right side. I kind of expect it to happen to me. Guess I better get cracking on that left hand practice to develop some alternate brain pathways.
Maybe so. I suppose it depends upon your preferred drawing style. To a fault, I long for precision and my right hand is not likely to give it to me. I’m hoping my left hand, such that it is, outlasts my heart and brain 🙂