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.

Here is Stumpy, all stripped of any existing paint for as far as I am currently able to.

Overall the process of stripping Stumpy went okay. For those not sure how I strip miniatures, here is a link to my post on my Eastern Front project about it:

I still have some old Ork bits laying around so I got an arm out and carved it into a stump, I also filled in some gaps and stuck him on a base. Overall it went okay, not as easy as before, but it got together slowly.

I used my airbrush to put a coat of primer on Stumpy today. Airbrushing still goes well for basecoats and I know I can use my airbrush with my left hand as I have done that many times before for more precise work, I wasn’t expecting this to be an issue. Now it is just waiting for my new tools to come in so I can start painting again.

I got my tools in from Greenstuff World, here is a bit of a first impressions on them.

Universal Work Holder

This is looking really sturdy, it is just going to be bit of fiddling out how I can mount my miniatures to it in a sturdy way, but apart from that it is feeling really sturdy and good.

Paintlauncher….. I mean Shaker.

Overall it does work well, once I figured out how to use it. So let’s see how it works.
So first off the way it shows you how to do it…..

I found the paint pot and I then mounted it in this way, it works but I can hardly get the pot back out of the launcher….. I mean shaker.

And then I tried the small size holder as the instruction clearly don’t say and it works well.

Hopefully in the next couple of days I can try and see if I can paint using my left hand and my eye-hand coordination isn’t going to be as shit as it feels at times.

So, this about a bit over an hour’s worth of work painting with my left hand for the first time. It went okay overall and I think with loads of practice I could possibly do this, but it is eating energy like a banana out of hell. I went for a classic Duke Nukem scheme for the clothing of Stumpy.

While everyone is off gallivanting on their Christmas shenanigans, I have myself a couple of quiet days where I have to do absolutely nothing. Thus, I practised a bit more painting with my left hand on Stumpy and even did some free-hand triangles on the grenades. I got most of the base coats done now, I did however notice a couple of things that I still do want to try and correct and then I am going on to the shading and weathering of Stumpy.

Just a quick and small update on Stumpy, I fixed most of the stuff I wanted to fix and covered him with a matte varnish with my airbrush, which is still wet in the picture, to protect the acrylics from all the stuff I am going to throw on it later. Not technically necessary if the acrylics are left to cure properly for some time, but it also gets rid of any of the shininess of some of the acrylic paints.

One thing I really started to notice is that at times you can’t easily reach something with your brush and the angles you have to approach things as are completely opposite from what I am used to. This is the biggest problem I have found so far to painting with my left compared to my right. Another issue is, that when I used to come across this issue when I was painting with my right I could just for that little bit paint it with left in order to reach that. I can’t really use my right hand to paint any more, not even small bits it is just too unstable. I am finding my way around it and mostly this just requires more practice to overcome.