I am Artsy as Hell

I always wanted to art for a living when I grew up.

I was (and am) pretty good at making arts, but I have never been particularly successful at being a self-promoting entrepreneur, which is apparently what you actually have to be to make a living as an artist. Talent is optional.

Oh, and you have to make a lot of art..

Since "working professional artist" doesn't happen instantly, you also have to have a regular job at first, and produce a bunch of art in your spare time until your art supports you.   This means you have to give up things like going out with your friends and wasting time in bars and stuff.  Which kind of sucks.

So I kinda gave up. 

Years and years ago.

I never paint anymore.  I rarely draw.  I don't sculpt anything. 

I have started taking pictures though, or, as I like to think of it, the lazy man's art (and before I get any hate mail about how difficult good photography is to make, I would like to point out that crappy artsy photography is remarkably easy to make, so just chill).

See how artistic I am?  I take close ups of flowers.

I always liked taking pictures, but more as a "I am documenting something that happened that I am too lazy to write about."  Photos have to have a story to be really artsy fartsy.   

I call this one, "Red Sunflower", and the story goes something like this:

I was at the supermarket waiting for my boyfriend to pay for propane at the service desk.  We were having a beer making BBQ, and we were going to need it.  As I waited, I looked at the stuff in the floral department, stunned at how pretty the red sunflowers were.  I brought them up to my boyfriend and said, "You should buy these," and he said, "OK."  When we got home, I put them in water in a glass vase.  A few minutes later, the vase water had turned bright magenta because it leeched the dye back out of the flowers.  They were DYED.  I knew that.  Totally.  

Just before sunset, I took a picture of the petals back lit by the sun to represent the synthetic commercialization of even natural beauty.

(It might help if the stories are poignant or interesting in some way, but I have to start somewhere.)

I also take pictures of sunsets and mountains.  AMAZING.

Boyfriend and I walked up to the convenience store at the end of the neighborhood.  He had run out of cigarettes, and I felt the need to get out of the house.  The BBQ guests had gone home, and all that was left was finishing off the beer and food, and cleaning up, so a little break first sounded nice.

At the convenience store, I bought a bottled green tea with citrus, which was supposed to be sugar free.  I don't know why, but I was expecting tea with lemon.  Instead, I was shocked by a sweeter-than-candy flavor of sucralose overpowering all else.  Hiding my crushing disappointment on the walk home, I glanced up the road to the west and saw a spectacular sunset, so I took this picture.

 I had to walk an extra half a block to get this picture.  I am dedicated.

I call this "My Feet are Sore from Walking Several Blocks in Toe Shoes and I am Battling Enormous Disappointment in my Bottled Diet Green Tea"

I'll even attach my camera to a tripod and wait for a long exposure because I am just that artsy and patient.

I was mostly trying to figure out the settings on my camera. I've had it a few months and I still don't know how to use it very well, only kind of well.

Mostly I just push a bunch of buttons until the camera does something vaguely resembling something I want. Other times, it does the opposite of what I want and I pretend that that is actually what I wanted to do, I meant to do that, OK? I'm being "artistic."

What's awesome is that the camera doesn't take crappy pictures, like, hardly ever. I think I would really have to try to suck at photography with this camera, which leads me to believe that this particular form of art is going to have a lot of competition, and just because I take a good picture doesn't mean that I will ever be able to sell a single thing that I do, and I should just give up now without even trying, I mean, what's the point?

(Excuse me while I go hide under my bed and cry now).

Since the tripod was already out and everything, Dad suggested we play with some long exposures with the little LED lights we all have attached to our keys and light things up with them.

Obviously, the first thing I tried to do was to leave light graffiti all over the damned place.
And fail.

This shit is harder than it looks. Not only was I trying to write my name big, but I had to do it backwards and blind. My mom kept snickering and laughing at my contortions as she stood off to the side, but I kept at it, and I sorta almost wrote my name legibly...

A reasonable facsimile of my name.  I spelled it "LAURA" because it has fewer letters and less confusion than the proper spelling of "LEAUXRA".

And then I decided to get CREATIVE.

I made a flower and hid in the stem.

Also notice that I have three legs in this picture (and not in the dirty way).  There is a literal two left feet visible.

Way way back in the dawn of time, when I still thought life was going to turn out the way I planned and I was in college learning about art, there was a picture of Picasso drawing a bull on a long exposure just like this.  Only he used film. 

Anyway.  I remember thinking this was something only super-duper famous awesome artists could do.  I thought it would be way too complicated and... well, I'm pretty lazy, so I never tried.

Add in a few beers, though, and suddenly this is the most entertaining shit I have ever done.

I made something like a kitty cat arching its back and hissing.  This photo also includes a creepy self portrait with too many legs.

I don't know what I did to end up being paid to be nice instead of artistic for a living, but I would like my money back, please.