Congratulations to all who made it through the Offhand Painting Challenge! You get a gold star and a wild card/freebie spot for something on our bingo card!

For those of you that hadn’t heard of our putting on this challenge, this was something that had come up because Jillian Walker of Foxtail Studios was going through a surgery on her main hand and could not paint for about a month or so. It is/was to support Jillian as well as many other artists and people who have gone through accidents or have had to have surgery on their dominant hands. It started back in Feb. and went for two months and now we have a photo showcase in this post!

For me, this was a very frustrating experience. I did not realize how hard it was going to be. I chose to go with a space marine because of the large areas that were going to be pretty much one color and there wasn’t too much detail. In the shoulder pads, I kept going painting out of the lines. Other areas I had trouble with the blends even through the light layers (it looks streaky!) and in others I put paint where I realize now that I should not have put. With other areas such as the gun, I just put an extra wash over a thin black so that it would show a kind of dirtied effect and I didn’t have to worry about the massive amount of line work I might have had to do! I was thinking of ways to “cheat”/speed up the model without loosing too much quality. Some others had stated in various Facebook posts that your offhand knows everything that your main hand knows, but it just isn’t practiced. I had a lot of trouble with control and getting into tight spaces. I ended up having to use thin layers and a lot of patience, but it still looks very rough. If you haven’t done this before, I do suggest giving it a try. You might learn a thing or two to add to your arsenal of painting from your offhand.

From Mark Maxey of Maxpaint:
Wow, what a difficult challenge. Kudos to all that even attempted. By no means was it easy as you can see in my attempt. My hats off to Jillian and all that did the offhand challenge in solidarity with her. I’m glad I did it…once 🙂

From Lyn Stahl of Metalhead Minis:
It was a fun challenge and a good experience. I thought that I was going to come out with a paint job that looks like a three year old did it, but was glad to see that my right hand can manage table top painting. Lol.

This last one is done by none other than Jillian Walker herself! She has also done a little write-up to explain how we got here in the first place.