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2:13 PM, Wednesday August 5th 2020

Hi, sorry to hear of your situation. I think you really need to cut yourself some slack on this issue as it shouldn't interfere with your enjoyment of drawing. I would suggest two possible options one involves pursuing drawabox and one not.

Drawabox option.

De-emphasise the shoulder thing. Yes ideally that is what we should be doing but if you can't, you can't. Your situation is much different to someone that just isn't putting in the effort. Focus on just doing your best to achieve the results in those lessons you can. Much of the construction approach applies regardless of whether it is one fluid line or ellipse or not. Try to achieve a similar result even if not strictly in the manner specified. Maybe work on a smaller scale, microdrawabox :-) or something like that.

Non-Drawabox option.

Look for other courses or options. You will find that many artists don't particularly follow the from the shoulder approach to produce their work ( most of those on iPads for a start ). Often the limitations that we have actually encourage us to find solutions that create highly unique and brilliant works in new styles. Matisse made paper collages when his health was unwell and couldn't paint.

Hate to thinking of you sweating over this fairly technical aspect when you could perhaps be really enjoying some other style, method or technique.

2:35 AM, Saturday February 20th 2021

I didn't get back to you when I made the original post, but I did read this message and thought about it a lot.

As for the drawabox option, I took that spirit of the rules rather than letter of the rules concept to heart, and took the analytical aspects of drawabox into other methods I tried. That helped a lot, but it improved my observation skills more than the hand skills of drawing. Unfortunately, that caused a lot of disappointment in my work as my mechanical skills lagged so far behind my analytical skills.

I combined the drawabox and non-drawabox options, eventually, and also looked into a lot of artists and other creative people whose technical limitations had a major influence on their work. Matisse is a great example. After reading more into him I learned several impressionists' distinct styles developed out of their physical or mental limitations, even Monet's distinct view of color came from visual issues he had. It was fascinating to revisit so much art and thinking of it as a physical expression of how each artist viewed the world. I found a lot of encouragement and inspiration in that.

Finally back over 6 months later, but I wanted to follow up on how your comment helped me in the time I was away.

10:20 PM, Saturday February 20th 2021

I'm glad it helped. Challenges do drive creativity and often end up in unique pieces of art. Van Gogh is my favourite and there is no doubt that there were mental challenges driving him. Given I have mental challenges I am hoping I will be the next VG :-)

Good luck with your artistic pursuits.

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