Glad to see many of you liked my Baby Yoda watercolor.
I gave it to Mr. Meyer… not sure what he did with. *Gasp!* Maybe he took it to work! That way Baby Yoda is always inspiring him at work! ^_^
The things that went through my crazy head:
I was going to title this, “the crazy things that went through my head,” but the thing that started this wasn’t crazy at all.
Anyways, yesterday, I decided to visit my mom which turned out to be a really good idea. She inspired me to go back to studying Marcus Aurelius.
In short: life sucks, deal with it!
Now, granted, my mom has this special ability of not telling you think you want to hear, but rather what you NEED to hear, but it’s always worded in such a powerful way that you walk out feeling like a bad ass and able to take on whatever life throws at you.
Fast forward to this morning. I had a completely unrelated thought. With the exception of the bible verse one my mother-in-law gave me, the coffee mugs that get featured in these Coffee with Art posts are nothing spectacular. Yes, I know you come here for the art, and not the coffee mugs, but that’s besides the point.
So, I thought, “You know what? I’m going to design a coffee mug!”
Then… things started clicking… Marcus Aurelius, inner baddass, mornings, watercolors… it all came together somehow.
Using my “if you don’t know what to draw/paint, look up a quote and go from there“ (patent pending) technique, I looked up Marcus Aurelius quotes. Found this one and wrote it one some watercolor paper:
I was about to make a pretty border of some kind, when this image flashed into my head:
And NOW, I want to do a whole series of these! Yay!
Tomorrow, I’m going to do a housecat with a roaring lion as his shadow!
My Conclusion
Humans are tough. Unbelievably tough. Just think of all our ancestors suffered through: horrors, diseases, wars, the jerks they had to put up with, the jerks most of them became. Bringing us to today. With the rise of mental health problems in recent years, it’s easy to forget how tough we truly are.
This isn’t a simple “Believe in yourself, Sailor Moon!” situation either. If it were that easy, we wouldn’t be suffering. Being able to look deep inside yourself and finding the strength to be resilient from day-to-day life, the unwillingness to let yourself become bitter and resentful. No. This takes a lot of meditation. Like exercise, inner strength is a muscle that needs built. I think there are many ways of doing that.
- Literal exercise (I’ve found that after a day of working out, things that would otherwise usually bother me are just “eh, no big deal”)
- Journaling
- Meditation
- Volunteering
- Art!
Then of course, it doesn’t hurt to have a coffee mug that reminds first thing in the morning to remind you that there is an inner badass deep within your soul.
I’ll get right on it!
Ash Meyer Art 