My first submission for 's Project Disability. Hopefully some of you might give this a go too! it was very enlightening!

=1pen challenged everyone to:


_{A challenge to you, all of you, to do artwork with your other hand, blindfolded, or both. For a moment, try to consider what it would be like to suffer a catastrophic injury (as it might be to an artist) to lose either your vision or use of your preferred limb. You can even go further and imagine the loss of both limbs and try creating art with your teeth or your toes. I'm sure you will find as I did that: we evolve, we adapt and in a strange way, as frustrating and discouraging as it is, it helps us to come to terms with loss and the surprising font of ability and strength that comes from coping with that loss.}


I created this artwork using entirely my left hand (I'm completely right-handed, everyone else in my family is ambidextrous or left handed) I used two pens, a red and a black pen which happened to be laying about my desk and I played it safe with the subject matter, portraits are my thing so I experimented with some cross-hatching etc. I experimented with the range of my weaker hand and tried to work on picking out details but it was quite hard.

I probably would have had an easier time with a larger piece of paper (duh) but I just used an A4 sheet landscape wise and tried to pick out the line of his profile. This was definitely created with Brett Whitley's ink work in mind and I liked how the hair came out.

This will definitely encourage me to work on more artworks with my weaker hand as I feel like I could strengthen it and do so much more with it than I am. I have the capacity to use it and obviously while I'm more talented with my right hand that appears to be more the result of years of practice than raw talent. This has definitely made me appreciate the use of my hands.

Textures from: