Is drawing with left hand better than with right hand ?

[QueenGwenevere]

thanoss, do yourself a favor and spend some time outside the lounge...

If you want serious discussion, this ain't the place. This is the land of silly gifs.

[OmenSpirits]

Queue the Packard face palm!

[vineris]

MY god this thread has gotten more responses than more serious questions generally do. This just shows why that other thread about how CA and it hitting a wall got so many replies.

And three of them were YOURS. Last I checked this was still an art forum, take your own advice and go update your sketchbook.

[thanoss]

And three of them were YOURS. Last I checked this was still an art forum, take your own advice and go update your sketchbook.

Who says I need to update my SB?. Maybe I am learning fine and actually in a meaningful good way rather than posting useless crap in an actual SB thread and then proclaiming it to be practice. Maybe I don't need to post pages and pages of so called SB practice to show everyone how awesome or not so awesome my so called study's are.

[Psychotime]

So you'd rather spend your time complaining on a thread while simultaneously complaining about how other people are also involved on the thread you're complaining on instead of doing something constructive, that you're complaining isn't done enough on the site and is the reason it's gone down the tubes, which is apparently all you spend your time on this site complaining about instead of posting work, which you say you have no obligation to do?



You lost me, thanoos.

[Frida Bergholtz]

Who says I need to update my SB?. Maybe I am learning fine and actually in a meaningful good way rather than posting useless crap in an actual SB thread and then proclaiming it to be practice. Maybe I don't need to post pages and pages of so called SB practice to show everyone how awesome or not so awesome my so called study's are.

Holy smokes! Perhaps you should just count to ten and step away from the internet for a while. Go for a walk or something.

[Raoul Duke]

bcarman-I guess the line exercise didn't convince you.

This is where my bias comes from.
My brother is a lefty. When I was a kid he would copy a comicbook cover line for line. I would draw original characters from imagination. We had the same upbringing, same genetics and same taste. He just had better hand eye coordination and I had more fun.

[bcarman]

Anecdotal is not scientific. I'm not convinced. I'm a righty and I'm way more awesome than the lefties I know.

[Kamber Parrk]

Anecdotal is not scientific. . .

Science is overrated. 'specially when it comes to art. . . 'cause it's art. . . not science. . .

. . . so. . . Anecdotes Rule! I guess. . . but, Betty Edwards is still the L. Ron Hubbard of neuroscience.

Yet, I never understood why, in elementary school, the Left Handed had to be issued those "special" scissors with the rubber coated handles. Probably to stigmatize their evil choice of the wrong hand (?).

[Arshes Nei]

Depends if the hand is also the hand that deals with baby batter.

[skullsquid]

My left hand is only good for masturbating.

[vineris]

Who says I need to update my SB?. Maybe I am learning fine and actually in a meaningful good way rather than posting useless crap in an actual SB thread and then proclaiming it to be practice. Maybe I don't need to post pages and pages of so called SB practice to show everyone how awesome or not so awesome my so called study's are.

You don't need to do anything. But if your contribution to CA is nothing but angry ranting, then you're not any more useful than any of the people you rant about. We love our assholes not because they're assholes, but because they're useful assholes.

[Raoul Duke]

Anecdotal is not scientific. I'm not convinced. I'm a righty and I'm way more awesome than the lefties I know.

I'm not going there. Not all great artists are lefties and not all lefties are great artists. The OP's premise for this thread is absurd. But I'll say there could be a little something to it, just not enough to matter. As a matter of fact the advantage I'm suggesting lefties have matters very little. If you don't believe it that's fine. I doubt there's any conclusive studies that wouldn't fall into the realm of pseudo science.

Moar Anecdotal Bullshit!

[Venger]

Hands don't mean anything. It's the brain that's the important bit.
Point in case - I know a sculptor who lost his sculpting hand (right) and had to relearn with his off hand (left) - I doubt any could spot the difference between his sculpts nowadays.

If you're asking which side of the brain is more dominant and which side makes the best artist, well that's what training is about.

[bill618]

Yet, I never understood why, in elementary school, the Left Handed had to be issued those "special" scissors with the rubber coated handles. Probably to stigmatize their evil choice of the wrong hand (?).

My left hand is my right hand.

I don’t remember sporting any rubber gripped "special" scissors, and I went to elementary school in the B. F. Skinner era of behavioral engineering.
But I do remember the "special" corked fork…

[Velocity Kendall]

" Probably to stigmatize their evil choice of the wrong hand (?)."

my granny is a lefty and in Ireland when she was a little girl millions of years ago they made lefties write with their right hands. her writing sucks and not just because shes old as fuck. but she can draw good. point being maybe lefties get tired of smudging the crap out of their writing and draw. when i was a kid the devil tried to make me write all these crazy evil messages backward but you couldnt read them as the ink was all smudged everywhere, so he let me draw evil drawings instead. good old devil, i owe him everything.

bill youre more awesome than everyone.

[Kamber Parrk]

Here we go:

Proof! (Felt like I was having one of those moments where you remember something from childhood, try to relate it to someone, and it just comes off as crazy rambling-- I'm sure this will get worse as I get older and blather on to children about floppy disks, cassette tapes, and IBM "Selectric" typewriters with that crazy jumping golf-ball-thingy with all the numbers and letters on it. . .)

VK-- I've had elderly relatives tell me about the "correction" of the "aberration" of left-handedness as well.

[left_hand_sketching]

Can you prove that?

See here. I needed less perspective guide to draw the same object. both are based off a reference picture.


also, it's just a fun experience. when are people getting upset. I'm just trying to know if we can use the left hand to improve my drawing skill overall. maybe it's easier to learn to shade with the left hand.

[QueenGwenevere]

Well, a couple of my teachers did have us do an exercise where we had to draw with our non-dominant hand... The point was to get us to look harder at the model and think more about the lines we put down, because we couldn't rely on automatic drawing habits. So that's what you might be experiencing.

In my classes results were the same for righties drawing with the left hand, and lefties drawing with the right hand, so I HIGHLY doubt the results had anything to do with which actual hand was used, and everything to do with not relying on drawing habits.

(Can't say your examples do much to convince me that there's any kind of vast improvement by using the off-hand... But if the "non-dominant hand" exercise helps you, hey, go for it.)

I draw better with my right hand. I also cut bread better with my right hand. And do most everything else better with my right hand. I think I'll stick with that hand as long as possible, it works fine.

[Raoul Duke]

Left hand artist-Not bad considering. It's a charming mess. But you said something about more accurate results? I'd say your just self imposing a headache if you plan on taking this seriously.

[OmenSpirits]

Two words.

Frank. Frazetta. Had a stroke and had to used his left hand to keep being GOD!

[arenhaus]

See here. I needed less perspective guide to draw the same object. both are based off a reference picture.

And the left-hand result is, consequently, less precise. I have no idea why you think it is better than the right-hand version. It isn't - it has more mistakes, less correct line convergence, etc. The only way it is "better" than the other one is that the line is looser and might seem more "creative", "suggestive" instead of precise, what have you. It isn't necessarily a real improvement - that's entirely subjective.

Besides, your "experiment" is very much flawed because you used different technique on the two. In the case of the right hand, you have used construction lines and were modeling the form more technically, in the case of the left hand, you eyeballed it and were modeling the form more loosely. So it shows precisely nothing about the differences between your hands. Try to doodle the same loose way with your right hand (or make a tighter plot with the left one). I suspect the result would be similar, and all you'll find is going to be that you are ambidextrous. Which is fun to know but not very useful other than as insurance against the loss of your right hand (FSM forbid).

So yeah, you have the perspective sort of internalized; it does not depend on which hand you use; you can doodle an object from reference with your off hand, and the result is as expected. No earth-smashing discoveries here.

[bill618]

Proof!

Actually those are ambidextrous scissors (with the symmetrical finger loops) and were probably handed out to everyone. The rubbered loops are just a comfort feature, IMO. The debossed LEFTY on the blade is the important feature and serves as a dual teaching aid for young kids in the proper way to hold them when cutting. If a Lefty holds them ‘right’ then the debossed LEFTY stamped on the blade will be visible and reading ‘right’. If a Righty holds them wrong, they’ll see LEFTY upside down and backwards.
That’s my theory anyhoo.

I do have a couple of left-hand airbrushes (lefties can’t use the right-hand model).



----
Years ago I started practicing writing and drawing with my right hand after a beer bottle accident severed a tendon at the base of my left middle finger. I didn’t notice any cognitive differences, like diminished mental rotation capacity, nor did I expect any difference. I got used to the situation and abandoned the right-hand training.
Now a massive stroke in the right hemisphere, on the other hand [corny pun], might cause some issues for a visual artist.

Even though the brain is lateralized and compartmented functionally (due to physical size and signaling efficiency from what I’ve read), there’s constant ‘cross-talk’ going on in that unimaginably complex 3 lb universe.

[QueenGwenevere]

I'm surprised nobody's mentioned Da Vinci... He switched from right to left after an accident, seems to have worked out fine except for writing everything backwards.

Though I see no compelling reason to switch hands if your dominant hand still works. You'll just make learning to draw that much harder if you add the task of training your non-dominant hand.

[Candra H]

I actually thought the op was a spammer, going by their username and silly question and all. Shows how much I know...

But hey, I'm a lefty and I don't smudge my writing, ya bastards! But that's probably because my hand rests below the writing. I smudge my drawings a lot though. I have to shade from the top right to bottom left so it doesn't happen. Or use a sheet of paper to cover what I've already done. I also find it easier to draw faces/shapes/buildings etc facing in a three quarter angle to the right. Not sure if thats to do with my leftyness or because I'm still too much of a beginner to get good at other angles. Most likely the latter because the more I draw other angles, the easier they get. So yeah, a bit of lefthanded nonsense for you.

And now I'm off to surreptitiously take over the world by producing left handed tin openers.

[bill618]

I also find it easier to draw faces/shapes/buildings etc facing in a three quarter angle to the right

If you mean the front or face of something turned to the right (subject’s left), it seems we do have a left side bias in attention to details and facial recognition, regardless of handedness. So things and faces turned somewhat to the right would showcase more of the left side.

http://www.academia.edu/856269/Left_...canning_habits

http://www.journalofvision.org/content/12/2/22.full

–The universe, after all, is left-handed. So “they” say.

[Velocity Kendall]

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/cu...ve-artist.html

[Qitsune]

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/cu...ve-artist.html

In the wake of his stroke, Sarkin became an acquired savant - a person to whom neurological damage grants an exceptional skill.

They say he has an exceptional skill, but his drawings suck. That's a very lame skill to have. The truth is his brain damage gave him a compulsion. Maybe he will learn to turn that compulsion into skill. Right now he draws like an OCD high school kid. So so being left handed gives you the skill to draw like a left-handed high school kid?

[Velocity Kendall]

who needs discipline when you have obsession?

[Lady Medusa]

Here we go: [picture of infernal scissors for lefties]

My God how I hated those things when I was a kid. Everyone else got one with that nice big loop to fit more fingers and us lefties were stuck with those tiny blunt broken "things".
Why can't they make left-handed scissors with that big loop