Building Calluses

12/09/2022

Firstly, I completely forgot to update this blog over the past couple of days. I kept meaning to and just never did, but I'm glad I remembered now!

I've been doing the same-old-same-old. I'm slowly unpacking some of the things I brought home from my stay with family, even though I'm going back around Christmas to stay with them again. I've got new plushies I thrifted - one of them is an old Webkinz - and I'm going to be figuring out how to wash all of them. I think a delicate cycle while they're inside something like a pillowcase would do some good, that's usually how I like to wash things like that. I've also got some lovely new sweaters and I'm gonna be wearing them whenever I get the chance.

When I got home, I decided to pick up guitar again. I used to spend a lot of time just strumming and trying to get familiar with the instrument, but nothing stuck. I'm not the most patient man, it can take a while for me to get comfortable with not being immediately good at something, but I like to try regardless. I've been learning how to pluck the strings properly and understand tabs, and mostly, I've been just trying to build calluses on the ends of my fingers. I used to have some good ones, but since it's been a while since I was playing frequently, I need to re-develop them. My fingers hurt like hell after playing guitar, but that's how you get where you need to be. My mom used to be a professional musician, and her calluses were so thick that she could put a needle in the ends of her fingers and not feel anything. So, hopefully, I'll play guitar enough to be able to do the same.

I've been doing a lot more drawing in my sketchbook lately, as well. When I visit family, I don't get to do digital art, since my laptop's screen doesn't have the same depth and range of color that my desktop has. So I never know how a piece is actually going to look until I get home, which can be frustrating. On the bright side, I've got my alcohol markers and some good color pencils, so I can make a lot of traditional art when I'm visiting family. I'm going to be grouping markers with similar colors together with some hair ties later, so I can just reach in and grab what I need. I'm excited to show some of my work once I get some of my traditional art scanned.

In other news, I've been building playlists for characters of mine with music I think that they'd listen to. The protagonist from my main wip has a lot of doomgaze and new wave on his playlist (such as The Smiths, Have A Nice Life, Radiohead, and Deftones), and one of my other characters has music on his that I think is best described as dad music. Tool, Slipknot, Toadies, Alice In Chains... the list goes on. It's been a great exercise in understanding my characters, building their personalities, and seeing the kind of things they'd relate to. It's something I highly recommend.

Well, I think that's really all I have to say today. I'll hopefully remember to update tomorrow! I love running this blog, so I'll try to do my best to remember. Hope you're all having a great day. Take care!