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Anyone used Drawabox to train their non-dominant hand?

12:56 AM, Tuesday April 4th 2023

Anyone here using Drawabox to train their non-dominant hand? If so, I'd be curious to hear what your experience has been like so far.

I'm new to Drawabox--and formal art instruction in general--and I recently tried some of the lesson 1 exercises using my non-dominant (left) hand because of an injury to my right hand. I was (pleasantly) surprised that there was only a small decrease in quality when using my left hand compared to my right hand. When I've tried writing or drawing (from the wrist) with my left hand preivously, it hasn't gone nearly so well.

I assume this is due in large part to me still learning how to draw from my shoulder (i.e., the difference in muscle memory between my left and right arms is much less than it is for something like writing), but I also wonder if using a larger muscle group (i.e., drawing from the shoulder instead of the wrist) helps as well.

Anyway, this piqued my curiosity whether anyone was using Drawabox to train their non-dominant hand. Depending on how long it takes my dominant hand to heal, I might try Drawabox with my non-dominant hand.

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1 users agree
2:59 PM, Saturday April 8th 2023

Hello,

This is an interesting question, as I was thinking lately to use more my non dominant hand. I often have tendinitis at my right wrist (more due to a lot of writing than drawing), and wondered if I could improve using my other hand, at least to spread the load on both hands).

First tries for writing left handed were not very good, but didn't try for drawing. I would be curious about how it's going if you do so, and how you find the results compared to your dominant hand.

4:03 PM, Sunday April 9th 2023

After drawing with my left (non-dominant) hand for a week, I've noticed that the mark making direction is more important when using my left hand. When I use my right hand, I can draw fairly smooth lines in most directions, but for my left hand, I seem to only consistently get smooth lines if I make the mark from right to left. I suppose this makes sense given that most people find that there's one direction that feels "more natural" when making marks. Anyway, it means I have to rotate the paper a lot more when drawing with my left hand.

1:22 PM, Thursday April 13th 2023

Thank you for the feedback.

It seems encouraging. Do you think you will go on training your non-dominant hand?

I still need to rotate paper even with my dominant hand, so I'm sticking to it and try to balance workload to let it rest.

1:48 PM, Saturday April 15th 2023

I think I will (in addition to my dominant hand once it's fully healed). I know it'll take time, but I'm in no rush.

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