See These Torture Devices? This Is What I Have To Deal With When I Get Too Excited/overloaded With Work

See these torture devices? This is what I have to deal with when I get too excited/overloaded with work and I draw and draw and draw with no regard for the warning aches in my wrists.

I know a lot of other artists suffer from tendonitis/carpal tunnel syndrome, and webcomic artists are especially prone to it since we spend a lot of time hunched over keyboards too. (I’ve noticed typing seems to aggravate it more than drawing.)

Here are some tips I have learned the hard way:

Don’t assume the pain will “go away eventually” and just keep drawing.  Trust me, it will not. It’s only downhill from here. The pain means you’ve already injured yourself.  Take a break.

If you do press on anyway, you’ll have to wait longer to heal.  When I first had my doctor see me, he said to take a minimum two week break from drawing and typing.  If you are like me, that’s like asking me to stop breathing for that long.  Do you want to die?? Do you?? I didn’t think so.  Put the pen down and take a break.

It takes a LONG time to heal. It took me about two years to stop feeling the effects when I messed my wrists up really bad the first time.

Once you feel better, the instinct is to immediately jump right back into drawing/typing/whatever activity caused your repeated stress injury  (hey I’m not judging) but be careful not to overdo it and hurt yourself all over again!  It’s not like a videogame health bar that always replenishes back to full.  I’ve noticed that once I got tendonitis, it never fully went away, and the more often I induced it with bad habits, the sooner it comes back after doing the same amount of drawing.  Pay attention to your activity and to your body telling you it’s time to stop before it hurts.

This video of wrist exercises helped reduce my pain a lot, and is also good for preventing it in the first place.

Take care of yourself, artists.  Your hands are your livelyhood.  Don’t take them for granted!