I'm a leftie thus drawing and practicing is rather challenging cos some of the tips and techniques is difficult for me to apply. although i can practice, and have found some alternatives. it just makes me doubtful if what im doing is still ok. also some tips that'll help. thank you.
First: Drawing is not writing. You do not need to use your writing grip when doing DrawABox. You will not be using hand or wrist motions.
You will be using shoulder (with a little bit of elbow) motions to draw. There's not that much difference between drawing from the left shoulder than the right one. The only real difference is you preferred drawing angle will be different (mirrored) compared to right dominant hand artists. So you can totally draw all your lines from right to left by always rotating the page accordingly.
Besides that minor difference, you can use all the same exact techniques explained in DrawABox.
So for example in the superimposed lines exercise the examples show fraying only on the right side of the lines. But since you are a leftie you will want to draw lines from right to left instead, so your fraying will instead be on the left side. This is fine.
In the table of ellipses it shows ellipses tilted to the right. This would be comfortable for a right handed person. But you instead will likely want to tilt your ellipses to the left.
Don't think there's any other exercises where left VS right handed would matter. But if you run into one remember you can just mirror the exercise to work better with your dominant hand, or simply rotate the page to align the line you need to draw to your preferred drawing angle.
Hey there, fellow leftie here. I've been doing the Drawabox exercises for about two years now.
My writing grip is atrocious because my teachers gave up correcting it after a while and my handwriting was legible when I wrote like that and a lot of teachers struggled to wrap their heads around how to teach me... so my grip was wonky but good enough - gives me a bit of pain when I write for long periods but otherwise it works.
Anyway, when I started Drawabox, I used my writing grip for a while but found that I had trouble modulating my pressure control because the grip is entirely driven by my thumb movements. Because of that, I decided to experiment a bit and ended up learning the grip that they'd taught me in primary school - tripod. Except I only used it for drawing, so all my muscle memory for drawing from the shoulder is bound up in that pen grip that I simply lack the finger dexterity to write with.
I'm not suggesting that you need to try a whole new pen grip, but if you're having trouble controlling your pressure then it's worth trying as well.
Now as Yoyobuae said, you're likely to find drawing from right to left more comfortable. It's not a hard and fast rule though as I know some lefties that do actually like drawing left to right. So take your time to experiment, find the angle that feels more comfortable for you (for me it's right to left, about 30 degrees) and stick with that. Rotate your page so you can use that angle. The range of angles you can use will naturally expand over time with practice since humans are lazy and you'll end up increasing that range by degrees at a time.
Basically, your handedness should have no effect on your ability to do these exercises and it certainly hasn't for me. If you're finding your lines are smudging, you might need to get a different pen.
Happy DaBing!
Some of you may remember James Gurney's breathtaking work in the Dinotopia series. This is easily my favourite book on the topic of colour and light, and comes highly recommended by any artist worth their salt. While it speaks from the perspective of a traditional painter, the information in this book is invaluable for work in any medium.
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