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?"

Use feet, elbow...

[Qzukk]

Plug in two mice, castrate a ball mouse to use for clicking with one hand while moving the second mouse with whatever part of his "art arm" still works.

Re:No hands

[kenrblan]

My art teacher in high school had only partially formed limbs, ie. nothing past the elbow or knees. He used prosthetic legs, but did a variety of things to produce art. When drawing or painting, he would slide the pencil or brush underneath his watch wristband. He also did ink drawings by dropping ink on a page with a straw and then blowing the ink around by forcing air through the straw. When painting things like clouds, he would dip the end of his arm into the paint and just put arm to paper. It was quite impressive to see firsthand.

Re:What About the Other Hand?

[pieceofstone]

I also agree with this. Frank Frazetta learned to paint with his left hand after a stroke impaired his right.

Two Broken Arms

[Herkum01]

Have a good friend, Russell who broke both his arms [typepad.com]. This might help give a new perspective on the issue.

Re:What About the Other Hand?

[durrr]

He's an artist. Drawing with his other hand is not what he's looking for.

What he should do is learn drawing with his foot: Seriously. People have learned to tie knots and play piano and whatnot else with their feet, they can be trained to very high dexterity and i promise you that if the guy can draw even a halfbaked piece of artwork with his foot while filming it for youtube his art based income will explode.

Re:What About the Other Hand?

[theheadlessrabbit]

Perhaps a vacation would be a better choice than inducing a frustration built upon frustration.

For artists, taking a vacation can be more stressful than working.
The whole time I'm "relaxing", I'm stressing over all the ideas I'm having and are unable to accomplish

eg. The only time I am able to enjoy a concert is when the band has hired me to be their photographer, because then I am working on composing cool shots, and creating something. Otherwise, when I'm just at a concert for 'fun', I spend the whole time thinking, "damn, that would have made a great shot...I wish I had my [camera gear] with me"
(and it's not about the money, its about the hassle security gives people with SLRs (and standing front row/backstage))

working to use the non-dominant hand might not achieve anything artistically, but the feeling of working hard to achieve something might be good for boosting his morale and distracting him during the slow healing process. Probably better for his spirits than a vacation would be.

I'd like to know myself

[Windwraith]

I got some strange...thing in my hands that makes moving them very painful, mostly the fingers. Drawing became difficult since then, and I can't really use my left hand (same condition) or anything...it's a massive delay in my projects.
Since this started I lost more and more interest on doing anything, since it's just painful and unrewarding.

How about one of these:

[denzacar]

http://the-gadgeteer.com/2000/08/30/cat_eye_finring_review/ [the-gadgeteer.com]

http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/08/genius-ring-mouse-slips-around-your-finger-cues-up-beyonce-jams/ [engadget.com]

These guys offer various alternative pointing device solutions:
http://www.adapt-it.org.uk/browse_category.asp?id=40&item=Mice [adapt-it.org.uk]

And there are solutions like these out there too:
http://www.fentek-ind.com/nh-mouse.htm [fentek-ind.com]

Re:I'd like to know myself

[Anonymous Coward]

You might want to see a doctor about that, if for no other reason so that you can call it by name instead of "some strange... thing". He might even be able to help you with it.

Re:Umm...

[Bigjeff5]

Getting off topic now, but speaking of "intentional sloppiness", a friend of mine is a digital artist and was disappointed to discover that her meticulous, painstakingly detailed Photoshop pieces were not as popular as her sloppy, "thrown together" Corel Draw charcoal pieces. The Photoshop pieces took more skill and were infinitely more detailed (and she liked them a lot better), but people thought the stuff she did in a couple hours with Corel Draw looked cooler.

To give you an idea of how much detail her art contained, she once lost an image because it had gone over the 2gb file limit, and she hadn't saved it in the large file format. She was pretty devastated over that one.

You're kidding, right?

[DerekLyons]

"What expressive art tools are available that deemphasize precision work with your coordinated hand?"

Precisely none.

And what kind of a question is that anyhow? "My friend is used to doing precision work, what can I replace that precision work with?". The answer is trivially simple and should be blindingly obvious - you can't replace precision work with anything but precision work. You can retrain the non coordinated hand, eventually, but that's down to the person - the usual Slashdot "t3chn0l0gy ub3r all3s!" answers need not apply.