Anonymous asked: I read your ambidextrous drawing post and I wanna mention a good tip to y'all from a left-handed artist: If you can afford it, buy yourself a mouse with a numberpad on it and assign all of your tools to the buttons (along with undo/redo). You can swap tools without ever having to move your pen to do so and it makes everything so much faster! This also applies to right-handed artists who use their mice left-handed, but idk if people make numpad mouses for left-handed people
oh! this is good! hey folks this is good
cardinailed0 asked: Sorry to bother you, but I just wanted to say something about that technique you used to be able to draw with your left hand — it's working for me so far!! I might finally be able to draw with both hands to balance the pressure- thank you so much!!! I love you and your art and it inspires me a lot! Have a nice day ♡
that’s so awesome! remember to take it steady though- take breaks frequently and do stretches! doesn’t matter if that hand doesn’t get tendonitis usually, you’re putting it under more strain than normal and it’s no good if you wind up with neither hand able to do anything! same to anyone out there who’s trying to learn to be ambidextrous- be patient, be forgiving to yourself and your body, and keep going!
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