Manda's (Amachan) Hobby with Disabilities.

I have lost a lot of functionality in my right hand. I have tremors in my hand that when bad will cause me to spill my drinks in a glass or mug when I hold it. And when it is calmer, my hand is so stiff that I struggle doing anything precise with it. Further more, the tremors are completely messing up my right arm and shoulders with muscle tensions in combination with my fibromyalgia. This isn’t everything, my eye hand coordination has gotten worse as well and some other things like my balance which doesn’t really effect my painting. My Doctor also found it to be very similar to Parkinson’s Disease. At first we suspected some medication to be the cause, but after reducing them for a while there was no difference, so now I am awaiting an appointment with a specialist.

Since I have always felt that I can do a lot with my left as well as with my right hand, just that I was taught everything with right and thus it is more practised. Because of this I have decided to want to learn how to paint with my left hand. It is not as simple as that though, I will also struggle holding miniatures with my right hand, so I am going to need some additional tools to help me. For this I have ordered a model holder that will firmly stand on my table to hold the miniatures. More on this when it comes in. I also ordered a paint shaker to make things easier.

I will be painting a one armed Ork from 40k. It is an old model and I thought it fitting to paint him for this project. His name is Stumpy and there is some background to him as well.

When I was first learning 40k with a friend I had these old Orks painted from when I was a kid. They were painted quite terribly. But when we were learning 40k, his arm kept falling off, it was a metal arm holding a stick grenade. This is how he got the nickname stumpy. I was in the process of repainting him back then and then we lost him, couldn’t find him for years. So it kind of became the legend of Stumpy. I earlier this year found him again hiding in an old shoe of mine. So at that moment I decided I want to give him a proper paint job and a proper stump where is arm used to be.

So this project will go over the process of getting Stumpy looking proper and to see how my disabilities are going to effect my hobby going forward.