Fellas, hands, and a comic about the sun.

Its been a while since i‘ve really been able to sit down and write about whats been going on in one of these posts. (And boy has a lot been going on...) I‘ve been meaning to but gosh things have been so nuts its easy to forget!

There are quite a few things I feel its best to get out there as they have an impact on my future as a creator. I’ve briefly mentioned it on twitter previously but never really went too much into detail about what exactly is going on with my hands, and why they continue to become a growing issue.

Keep in mind as you read that nothing is confirmed for sure yet, so I am refraining from self diagnosis and rather just giving a description of my personal experience and the evidence I do know.

4 years ago was when i first really started having hand pains while i was going through my last years of high school. It started out only occasionally while I was writing notes but grew into a daily problem as by the end of the school day my hand would feel weak and ache horribly and it was hard to even grasp a pencil, both in my fingers and my wrist. At this time I didn’t really draw that much.

This continued to be a problem throughout the rest of 2016 and 2017 as i kept going through school and eventually had to switch to exclusively using pens as i was finding it basically impossible to use a standard pencil anymore, and at home I started to draw more and more using a tablet pen. My hand wasn’t really hurting much at least after making these changes, so I could often spend hours and hours a day drawing without taking a break.

In this last year or so, my hand pains have come back worse than ever and I have also started developing tremors. The time it takes for me to draw before the pain becomes unbearable has shortened gradually from hours to around 30 minutes to an hour if im lucky. No matter how long of a break I take from drawing the pain doesn’t go away. This is the main reason why my output on drawings has slowed considerably to how it was when i first started uploading as smorbee in 2019.

As I said i have no official diagnosis for why this has happened as of writing this, only guesses based on family history and looking at symptoms.

The reason I bring this up is, whether its an injury from overuse or a hereditary issue,  looking at the patterns the pain won’t be going away any time soon and I have not found a way to prevent it that works consistently without it coming back worse later. I take frequent breaks, often for days at a time, without any benefit, standard off the shelf pain medications don’t work, and trying to work in ergonomic positions at most only provides a temporary relief. It’s already affecting my ability to draw and I can’t help but fear that my days of being able to draw like I want to are numbered.

This is the reason why I try to branch out of just being an artist as my main profession,, I love to draw so much and its that love that keeps me going even through the pain it puts me in, but I need a safety net of other things I can do to keep going. I’ve been putting more work into 3D modeling and programming lately, I want to try streaming, etc. etc.

I just want to make sure people are informed as to why if my twitter and, by extension this patreon, shifts away more and more from drawing as the main focus to more variety, as I feel that is inevitable the way things are going. No matter what I still want to create things people can love, whether its art or games or, whatever I end up doing moving forward. I still have so many ideas for characters and worlds and stories I want to share with people, and I don’t intend to stop any time soon.

Related to this it is with a heavy heart I must say that my comic project I started working on of Now Entering: The Sun is canceled. I wish it could have lasted more than 2 pages, but working on a comic is just too much for me in my current state while also having other projects im working on. I am so so sorry to people disappointed by this news, and I hope to bring it back for some other project one day and continue what I had started,,

I’ll work on seeing a doctor about my hand if there is anything they can do at all. I wish I could go back in time and tell myself to have done so years ago back when it was just a minor issue,,

Regardless of if it gets better or not, I have no plans to stop drawing for good. It’s just who I am and I couldn‘t stop if I wanted to hhghgg but with all that said, take breaks while drawing and writing y’all.,