Everything I draw ends up wearing a bow-tie

retro-tan asked: Hello, sorry to bother you with something so personal but your ambidextrous am I right? Were you born that way or did it take exercise? If the former, do you have any training you'd suggest to up the dexterity in my non-dominate hand? (I was recently diagnosed with a RSI but I 'm determined to keep drawing! ( ’̀-‘́)ง)

I learned to do it fairly recently! I used to noodle draw with my left hand just for fun and because it made for an interesting exercise, but when I came down with very bad tendonitis and was diagnosed with EDS it just made sense to dedicate the time towards being able to share the workload between both hands. Start small- draw simple shapes, like circles, squares and triangles, the alphabet and numbers- you’ll be surprised how difficult that is! Also draw two dots randomly and try to draw a straight line between them, that’s a good one for hand-eye co-ordination. 

Do these sorts of things for ten minutes, then stop. Don’t go for longer or you’ll tire out your hand and your brain, also when you draw with your non-dominant hand your OTHER hand is like ‘hey! I wanna do that! I can do it better!’ and goes all tense so you have to watch out for that and tell it to shut up.

Do this a couple of times a day- only a few at first, then more, and when you feel that you’ve got a grip on that try drawing more complex things, like characters you are used to drawing or observational drawings of objects. Also try to brush your teeth with your other hand! Those small precise movements you need to do that are great practice :Tb