Doing Digital Art When You Can't Use Your Hand?

Sludge writes "A good friend of mine who is a digital artist was recently involved in a house fire in which he suffered third degree burns to his 'art hand' which have made him unable to handle a mouse or a stylus for the coming months. If you or anyone near you has lost the ability to do something you love due to a physical injury, you know how painful and frustrating it can be. I need help discovering alternative software and input devices he can use while he recovers the ability to use his hand. The programs he uses most are 3dsmax, Z-Brush and Photoshop and he is used to working with a Wacom stylus. What expressive art tools are available that deemphasize precision work with your coordinated hand?"

What About the Other Hand?

[BJ_Covert_Action]

Is his other hand functional? It would be cheaper to work on being ambidextrous, and that may pay off in the future sometime as well. But if he's not worried about price, then finding a techy solution is definitely the way to go.

Re:What About the Other Hand?

[TamCaP]

I agree with parent. If the other hand is fine, our brains are capable of adjustment. It might take a while (I assume he is an adult) but should not be that hard, just require lots of practice and patience.

Simpl

[Anonymous Coward]

Let go of your diddle

Expression is precision.

[kurokame]

The problem here is that you can't replace precise, experienced control with anything except more of the same. You can do art pixel by pixel using the off-hand and get precision by throwing massive quantities of time at it - and you can do this using the exact same tool set as before. Experience will increase the off-hand precision.

It may be worth making now the time to experiment with new media - you'd be starting from more or less the same point regardless of the injury, so the awkwardness of off-hand manipulation will be less of a factor. It may also be less depressing than facing something you could previously do well, and finding that you no longer can.

Re:Umm...

[tverbeek]

While it wasn't as severe as this sounds, I injured my drawing hand back when I was in art school, which made holding a pencil (or pretty much any other tool) problematic for several weeks. While I was waiting for the right hand to recover, I gave the left a shot. It was difficult and frustrating, because I couldn't control it well enough for detailed work. But that doesn't have to be a liability. This might be a good opportunity to try setting aside the right-handed stylus death-grip (like I have), and try some more loose and expressive approaches to image making with the left hand, or holding the stylus another way and using the wrist instead of the fingers to control it. Maybe even mess around with traditional media like paint and brushes, or charcoal, which lend themselves to that kind of intentional sloppiness. It's a great excuse to try something different for a while.