Physically disabled and drawing from the shoulder
1:19 PM, Wednesday August 5th 2020
Hey, I'm a wheelchair user with hypermobile EDS, so my joints are too bendy, my muscles are weak, and my bones don't stay in place right. It's like the glue (aka collagen) that holds everything together is too stretchy. I dislocate joints and struggle to hold my torso or head upright. It's exhausting and annoying when I'm trying to work through the exercises.
Getting disability income means I have very few time commitments, so - in theory - I could draw as much as I wanted, yet it's taken me nearly two and a half months to get to the plotted perspective exercise in Lesson 1 in the boxes section.
My problem is that I spend so much energy during exercises trying draw from the shoulder that I end up too exhausted to draw for days after. U/Uncomfortable recommended we keep going with the shoulder drawing to build the strength, which I'm really trying, but EDS doesn't care.
I use a tilted surface to draw on, I support my sides with pillows, but I can't figure out a way to actually draw from my shoulder. I can barely even finish one line from my shoulder, so I need to adapt this process somehow, whether it's a way to support my arm or compromising with the limits of my body and drawing from the elbow, which I can do, but I understand it's not ideal.
U/Uncomfortable mentioned it's not ok to rest your elbow on the drawing surface, though you can rest your hand gently on the paper, because resting the elbow is too heavy an anchor and gets in the way of shoulder drawing, but I've only been able to draw at all by resting my elbow, so I'm unsure how to proceed.
Any ideas for how to accommodate this?