Art More

When I was a kid, I wanted to be an artist.  

I re-edited a photo to create this. 
Shaunna's T-shirts have this as an option
(minus the background.)

Now that I'm an adult, I wonder if I'll ever make money enough to live on as an artist.  And, I wonder what kind of an artist I'm going to be.  This second question is one that I never thought about as a kid.

I spent a lot of time trying to learn every hobby that I could, to see what I liked, and what I would be good at.  I taught myself how to draw.  I wrote stories.  I learned how to sew.  I played the clarinet (badly, but I tried.)  When I got my first computer, and a program that would let me start playing with layers and transparency, I taught myself how to combine photos to make a more interesting image.  I tried my hand at web design (better than I was with the clarinet, but still not very good.)  

I started an online drag coloring
book featuring people who I have
drawn cartoon portraits of.

The other night, Shaunna Rai had a show with Bunny Wonderland, Joslyn Fox and Cherry Lemonade, and a couple of girls from New Hampshire that I don't know.  I had to work, and it would have been cutting it close, to try to get there in time for the show to start.  So, I chose to stay home.  And, I started working on a project.  Shaunna Rai has been posting old photos on her instagram recently, and found some more pictures that she wanted to post, but they needed to be scanned first.  So, I decided to start scanning the pictures, while she was gone.  

About a quarter of the way through the pile of photos, it hit me.  As I played around with the brightness and contrast of the scanned photos, I realized that I've fulfilled my desire to be an artist.  And, photography is just a part of who I am as an artist.  

After hearing that Lady Valerie
Honeywell had a trading card,
Shaunna now has a trading card
set of 4 different cards.
Miss E'on and Leanna Love each
also each have one card.

You see, what I hadn't really taken into consideration is that my desire to be good at everything, gave me more tools than I know what to do with.  And, so while, some things, like painting are non-favorable forms of creation, others have been added.  Photoshop Elements, Light Room and Paint Tool Sai have become my tools of creation...along with the old standby of a pencil and paper.  The computer gave me the ability to paint, without getting messy...which was something I hated in school, and even more, during art school.  Painting meant that I was going to be stained, personally, or that I was going to ruin an article of clothing.  

2017 was a good year for me
as far as doing drawings, like this one
of Lindsey Devereaux.

I have thousands and thousands of photos in my life.  I have probably 10 different SD cards with varying amounts of photos on them.  My cell phone has so many photos.  My new external hard drive houses most of them.  My Facebook pages, the rest.  

With the creation of Shaunna Rai's merchandise line on DragQueenMerch.com, I started to combine my photography and my Photoshop skills.  And, I realized that there is still much that I need to learn.  And, I need to figure out how to break my way through the artistic/creative block that I have put up somehow.  In order for me to get better at my "graphic design" abilities, I need to challenge myself.  Each new task I give myself, or am given, I need to make it a test, to see what else I can learn.

So, my goal, for the year 2018, is to Art More...and learn more.  And, keep myself posting things.  Because the more I do it, the better the chance that the artist that I imagined at 5 I would be will become a reality.  And, who doesn't want to make the child they were at 5 proud?