Art has been so frustrating lately. I'm in drawing this semester, but I keep fucking up because my teacher is pushing us to do as many different medias in our semester as possible. So far we've done marker, pen and ink with watercolor, pen and ink, crushed charcoal [BULLFUCKINGSHIT btw], a shit load of crushed charcoal which EVERYONE hated, and then we were just working on charcoal pencils with tinted paper [black with white charcoal, blue with white and black charcoal, etc]. I didn't get to go to the critique day of that project even though I worked my ass off on those fucking orchids because of family shit.

I'm just frustrated I guess.

Been buried in WoW, really. WoW and writing, as I usually am. I've had a bunch of painting ideas, though, that I've been collecting references for and sketching and what not. But I'm taking AP Portfolio [Painting/Drawing] next year, and I don't want to waste all of my ideas over this summer and then be fucked for next year cause apparently that's an excruciating class. Which I'm pumped for, I just feel really... uncreative... Unenthusiastic would be a better term to use for how I feel.

I've been drawing. I did some really adorable lion sketches, and one serious one for the Lion and the Lady painting I'm going to do eventually which is looking really nice. I just don't have a scanner anymore cause my brother broke it after he stole it from me, and we don't have the money right now to buy a new one. It makes me sad.

But meh... Whatever.

It's that time of year again. Valentine's. Isn't it wonderful? All cheery and lovey and stupid~ But I'm not here to complain about my dislike of yet another Hallmark Holiday.

I'm here to complain about my inability to make any art posts. It's been forever, and I'm starting to get pissed. But I can't buy myself a new scanner because my father hasn't paid back any of the money he borrowed from me, and I have no heart to ask him to buy me a new one. We're struggling as it is, and these economically unstable times doesn't call for a brand spankin' new scanner for Laura. I've half a mind to leave dA for good and just whittle my time away trying to get my friends to critique my work. It's not like anyone really comments on my dA anyway.

Bah, I hate this day... stupid boys/girls...

Yesterday was a defining pillar in my life. For the first time ever I have a brand spankin' new lappy all my own. No one's used it before me. No hand me down processors. No second hand keyboard. Never before touched, used, crisp keys and unset settings that I can choose all my own without having to track them down and change them myself. Life is good. Oh so very good. His name is Lucipher. He has a built in mic and webcam, a freaking amazing graphics card [Age of Empires here I come~!], and so much memory space I don't think I'll ever be able to tear myself away from my work now. The only trouble is I'm not used to windows Vista, and it's begun to erk me to no extent. While I love my new computer, Windows Vista has proven to be a "LETS MAKE IT EASIER FOR THE DUMBASSES" operating system. For new computer users this is a glorious thing. But for someone who's been using Windows XP and Windows 98 since she was seven, it's difficult to not expect to have to track things down one by one in incorrectly labeled folders. So when I look at a folder that says "DESKTOP" and it takes me to "RIPCANVAS"/"MORE FOLDERS"/"WTAKSDFJSDFLOLZ", I get confused. Cause in XP you just clicked desktop and it took you straight to a list of the programs and folders that were on your DESKTOP.

It's fun. Figuring this all out is going to be a BLAST, I can tell.

But in other news, boredom has overtaken me. I've been searching for a remedy for some time now, and for a while it was quelled by playing Okami for two weeks straight. I think I'm on the last legs of the game now, I'm in Kamui finding Lika in the forbidden forest of doomz0rz. It's engaging. I love wolves. Especially ones with weapons that slice you in half.

But what I really wanted to talk to no one in particular about was traditional art versus digital art. Which is better? Which is harder? Are they both considered fine art or is one more hobby than the other? Etc Etc. My scanner broke and my god damn friend still hasn't returned my tablet to me. So I've been thinking about this extensively for some time.

How I see it is this. Yes, both are fine arts, but one is much harder than the other in my opinion. While both have their difficulties and extremities and erks and quirks and annoyances, Traditional Art seems the harder of the two to master. For one, when you color things with traditional art you can't ERASE it. There's no convenient back button on the upper left corner of your acrylic canvas that undoes that huge splotch of stupidity you just smeared all over your painstakingly perfect background. I come to this conclusion because I'm painting an acrylic of a birdgirl overlooking the ocean/sky right now, and my ocean/sky looks really good but she's going to take up a good 70% of that space and therefore, if I fuck her up, the painting will be scrap in my eyes. This is also why I've been dragging out my background process.

I'm frightened.

But other than that little tidbit I very much enjoy well done digital art. It makes me happy. And sometimes it even looks exactly like traditional art, it's pretty fantastic what you can do with technology now a days.

-nomnom-

So I just spent a pretty awesome two days with my oldish friends Burney and Tess. We played DDR and did some actual dancing and we were crazy. As they usually are.

I also applied at the Jimmy John's they work at, so fingers crossed on getting a job there cause that'd be sweetness.

But we remanisededed, since I haven't seen them in about four or five months. It was just a huge roll of rofl sushi. And it has lifted my spirits on a lot of things cause life kind of sucks right now.

One of the best moments was we were in the Game Stop at our mall, and there's this guy named Collen or Colin or something there that's a full time worker, and Burney thinks he's a hotty. [He kind of is. If he shaved that unslightly wannabe beard and mustache, yeah. But he's the dorky kind of hot.] Well we were hanging out in the store, trying to "avoid" him without being too far away from him and Burney starts talking about this Japanese commercial for PRETZ, some type of pretzel stick that has different flavors.

Apparently there was a new kind, pizza flavored, and they had an itallian theme for the commercial. So the really cute Japanese girl was all
"PRETZ-u PRETZ-u PRETZ-u~!"
But then after she said that for a while she's supposed to say like, good morning in Itallian or something.
But it sounds like she says vagina.
So Burney's like.
"It sounds like she's saying VAGINA"
And right at that moment Collen/Colin walked by. And then Burney was like "-GASP- DID HE HEAR ME?!" and he turned around and shrugged.

It was amazing.

Yay for really awesome anime jokes~!

The writing club I'm in at my school has really grown since my Freshman year. I've noticed that all of my clubmates have been maturing as both budding writers and young women, and being now the oldest of the entire group I find myself thinking more and more about the livelihood of our meager group.

How the beginning of the school year for our club starts out is lots of people come. Senior writers, poetry enthusiasts, starting up short story writers, and just people who love reading. But as the year wears on and more activities come into season the group number dwindles away to the original cast and one or two others that are sticking it out with us. It's disheartening.

I'm sad to say that my generation, and the generations behind me, are less literate than the school system would like to believe. Reading a short Shakespeare play that's only twenty five small pages long takes two months. Reading To Kill A Mocking Bird takes an entire semester or more. Usually I could breeze through these books in the speed of light, but how can I with these other children holding me back?

And the concern for my literary friends grows deeper as I am forced to watch them develop.

I don't pretend to be the best writer in the world. It isn't even my goal to be the best writer in the world. I love books. I love words. I love bending words to my will and having them say what I think. I love getting lost in the meaning of them, and I love the smell of gently used paper. The feel of crisp pages between my fingers excites me, beckoning me to read whatever secrets it has to unfold. The sound of a book's spine being flexed for the first time is a piano note all its own. And the accomplishment of finishing a story, tailoring a beautiful sentence or paragraph or chapter, having others read it and share your joy for the difficult art form. I'll never get enough of it.

And it makes me sad that less and less people enjoy the thrill of literature as time passes, and text talk dominates.

What happened to thinking?

What happened to comprehension?

What happened to the pursuit of ultimate knowledge?

The answers are lost to me.