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Hi Pochik,

Thank you for the kind words! I've unfortunately found similar issues in the pointer and middle fingers of my left hand too once I tried going full steam ahead with drawing. Feels like I can't win! I think I will need to take a break for now, unfortunately. The mind is very willing, but I think I will hurt myself if I try to continue. Perhaps I will try again later. Thanks so much for the kind words. :)

Thanks Jere! I unfortunately have come across the same RSI issue in my left hand since I tried doing all my drawing with that one. It just feels so pointless, continual roadblocks to this hobby I wish I could put a lot of time into. I think I will have to stop for a while. Sorry for the negativity, I'm just really upset that these physical issues are taking the pursuit of art away from me but I can't afford to hurt myself.

Yes, I was using a normal pencil "tripod" grip. Maybe I could try using larger paper (I have an A4 sketchbook now). I don't understand how use an overhand grip, examples (https://www.creativebloq.com/illustration/how-hold-pencil-correctly-11618880) show the pointer finger pushing down and that's just something I can't do.

I'd really love to continue drawing but I don't know how I can do it sustainably. Dealing with RSI is unfortunately putting a damper on the excitement I had to get back into drawing in a big way.

Thanks Torrilin! Since I'm pretty new to left hand drawing, I think I do need to be patient, see how I am after 3 months of drawing with my left hand every day. Maybe I can focus on specific things to improve, but that can be difficult when there are *so many* things that need improving! Perhaps one thing at a time, like making a specific shaped curve consistent.

I don't know if tendons are the issue with my right hand but I'll see my doctor to try and get the diagnosis process started. Perhaps there is some way to improve my hand but I think I won't have much luck with it in the near future. So left hand it is.

Keep up the good work! What I'd like to offer is: Maybe you can loosen up a bit, I can see some straight lines and I think you can find a more flowing line. There's not many straight lines in nature. Your 10-minute sketch looks good! Torso looks very long in the 25-minute drawing. Keep practicing :)

You have some nice lines and you're showing the directions faces are showing, which is great! Bottom left looks great! I'm hardly in a position to critique you as you're ahead of me in ability. I think just keep practicing, more of these and you'll probably see improvement!

Here's my attempts from today! 1-hour class mode. I'm still disappointed with my lack of pencil control. I think I'm picking up some stuff with form, but the shapes and proportions are pretty off the rails and it's made worse by the fact that I want my pencil to go a certain way, but it goes in the wrong direction when I put it on the paper. It's a little discouraging to see the vast gulf between my drawings and the reference pictures. But I will keep trying!

8 Mar 2019 by Birdie

Thanks Kim! I will keep trying to improve by using class mode regularly! Hourly with feedback on those efforts, I can refine my ability! Thanks!

Hi Torrilin,

Thanks for the feedback! I just did a class session since Kim suggested it, and I uploaded the pages in my sketchbook.

I became a subscriber so I can give back in return for what I will be able to learn from this website! And I can upload to the sketchbook section. It seems friendly here. :)

I tried adding those hands and feet lines as you suggested, Torrilin. I'm not exactly sure how I should draw them yet but I had a go.

Haha, I know that my drawings still have a long way to go. I posted in the critique area and saw a picture from an "absolute beginner" who seems way ahead of me! I will keep going, though. Since I intend on making a daily thing of this, I cross my fingers and hope that I'll be able to see improvement over time!

Class mode 6 Mar 2019 by Birdie

Hi Kim,

I will definitely have to check out the on-site gesture drawing tutorial! I know that the mind needs to be trained to "see" and that's most of what gesture drawing is about, and the hardest thing to learn. Despite doing so many gesture drawings so far, I still feel like I am stuck doing kind of contour drawings, though I'm trying to change that.

Thanks for the encouraging words! Hopefully I'll improve with time and effort! Thanks! :)

Thanks so much @Torrilin! I'm amazed to hear you think even the left hand lines are lively! Here I was thinking I hadn't got anywhere at all! I know I have a long way to go though, I want to keep up the effort every day.

Regarding level of detail, I don't quite know how to approach extra detail. I feel like I don't quite understand what else to put in there. Perhaps sone lines indicating the roundness of forms, etc?

I'll give class mode a try, maybe that will help me improve a bit. But even after watching a fair few gesture drawing videos I'm still not quite sure what landmarks I'm looking for. I also really want to improve my left hand co-ordination. Maybe with plenty of practice it might even end up being better to draw with than my right hand? Haha. Thanks for your feedback!

I had a go at drawing a dove from the "birds" section. I haven't really tried drawing a "full" picture entirely with left hand before (even though this would hardly be considered more than a "sketch"). I spent an hour on it, mostly aiming to just build up control with my left hand. It's frustrating when my mind wants to put a line down in a certain way and my hand goes in WAY off course so I end up with something way different than where I wanted my pencil to go. Hopefully I can improve on this in time with more practice!

Wish that I had the same fine pencil control! Nice work on these, I hope to reach your level some day too!

Haha, your ability is far beyond mine! I'm hardly in a position to critique but keep up the good work!!

For comparison, here is how I go with gesture drawing with my right hand. After two weeks of doing this every day I still feel like I don't "get it", despite watching video after video about gesture drawing, Proko Vilppu and so on. But I want to keep up the practice and improve as much as I can!

Sorry about the images being so massive! I just take a picture with my phone and upload to imgur.

Hi Line of Action,

For years and years and years and years, I've wanted to improve my art skills so that I could have semi-decent skills with art, particularly drawing. It's been the hobby I most wanted to improve with. Recently I decided to make a big push for improving my ability so I started doing daily gesture sketches. I'm using the site quickposes.com which tracks your progress and you can get a digital certificate after certain numbers of hours spent drawing, with incentive to draw every day. So that's what I'm doing.

However it was only a few days in when an old permanent injury started to surface, it's from a couple of years ago when I worked from dawn to dusk every day for three months to get a lot of work done on the computer. My right pointer finger did so much mouse clicking that I sustained a repetitive strain injury and I need to use other fingers or the other hand for the mouse. I didn't realise until more recently that this also means sustained drawing is not something I can do without risking further injury to that finger (it already started to feel stiff when I ignored pain to draw and I had to stop drawing that way). So this leaves me with the options of NOT using my right pointer while drawing, which is possible but awkward to use, or train myself to draw with my left hand.

I've drawn every day for two weeks now, with almost 10 hours total according to my quickposes.com profile. Only some of it has been with left hand but I think I'll continue like this. I can hardly express the frustration I feel with not being able to draw in the comfortable way I'm used to, but hopefully with lots of practice, I can actually build that left hand control I need. That and using pointer, index and thumb of my right hand, which produces better results but the awkward posture can bring muscle pain of its own. So today while I rest that, I'm using my left hand.

I'm so keen to become decent at drawing and although there's this frustrating barrier, maybe I can overcome it. At any rate, I thought I might begin posting my drawings here! Mainly gesture drawings at the moment, although I am trying to go through the figure drawing courses by Vilppu and Proko. But without good left hand control, I won't be able to produce anything that doesn't look terrible.

So here's today's attempts: all 1-minute gestures. I know how bad they are, but hopefully my line control will improve with time.

And according to quickposes.com, I've drawn 518 gesture sketches so far.

If anyone has suggestions for me to try, I'd love to hear! And I think I'll try to post my attempts each day. Thanks!