Pasithea

I'm still practicing my guitar. Making a surprising amount of progress. I can now make sounds that are similar to music. I really love this guitar. when I play it I can feel the vibratto against my chest and it's almost like hugging a big purring cat. I am also happy to realize that music is another media that has a cumulative positive effect on artwork.

Music is very emotional yet ephemeral. Even in practice I am letting myself really explore the emotion of the notes. touching and tuning each one to convey a particular mood. I can close my eyes and sigh and play and feel like I am a part of my music. I've found that I play best when I do this.

By contrast, I've wanted to do this with animation but never allowed myself to do it in some places. Learning Maya I've felt it was something very complex and I should do each step word for word how it was described in the book because I am trying to learn a technical thing. The same is true for inking my final work in 'Free as a Bird'. I'm so focused on faithfully reproducing the line that it loses the life the pencil drawings had. When I did the pencils I very deliberately tried to keep my mind focused on what the cat was thinking as I worked. I've found I'm not as able to do that for the inking work. Not from inability so much as just a different mindset.

But listening to myself as I practice guitar... There is a LOT of difference between simply plunking out the right notes with the right timing and making it _SOUND_ right. I've hit a level where I've finally begun to start letting that happen in drawing anyhow but the guitar has made me much more aware of it n some aspects where I had ignored it.