Classics today on our 100 Pictures Project journey – an uplifting quote from a monk hand-lettered by me, and a lino print of a black cat with a twinkling eye …
Picture 57: David Steindl Rast quote, hand-lettered
The root of joy is gratefulness…
It is not joy that makes us grateful;
it is gratitude that makes us joyful.
~ David Steindl-Rast
This quotation reminds me that often I have things all arse-about. [“Back to front” if you’re reading this aloud to small kids.] Creating and decorating the lettering gave me a chance to percolate. Click this if you’d like me to custom illustrate a word just for you. #wordoftheyear #powerofwords
I’ve paired other visuals with this favourite quote before – here with my lino print, Joie de Vivre.
Picture 58: Mr Inky lino print
That little cutie! ‘My’ cat is so.so.so black. His fur is as black as I imagine the ink of a squid to be. And, he has about a hundred one-fur patches of white (ie. single white furs) only visible when viewed more closely.
This lino print features him with a background pattern of raining ink pens. And with a crocheted blanket I admired before I could actually crochet (that’s been a recent thing).
Below left: hand printed – on the left is the print on paper, on right the inked lino block. Below right: Hand colouring in progress. I like the inky blue in the background.
A mini listicle: More cool stuff
There have been many small things to consolidate our joy and gratitude and add to our learning, these past strange months.
- Gorgeous Vivienne McMaster is back from maternity leave and making ripples-of-goodness with her know-and-love-yourself-through-photographic-self-portraiture courses. She is sunshine… I’d recommend her offerings wholeheartedly.
- Stasia Savasuk taught her most recent session of Style School right through lock down. Supporting and encouraging women to show up for themselves even (or especially) through iso. She has a wonderful instagram. Her rants are So.Good.
- I’m loving watching the addresses from Prem Rawat each morning. Click this to check out the full series of his lockdown videos.
- I was astonished how accessible this conversation was between Osher Günsberg and Richard Denniss (an Australian economist and author, see below)… for me, it unlocked some mystery around political economic messaging. We don’t have to swallow our elected officials’ econobabble and let them accelerate us into climate destabilisation.
- Richard Denniss book, Curing Affluenza – The book of the ^^^ podcast, sorta. I’m reading it right now and it’s making so much sense to me. When politicians say “… we can’t because of economic growth and GDP,” it’s their way of sidestepping a blunter truth that they “don’t want to”. “The Economy” doesn’t care what we do, and we as citizens can tell our elected representatives we want more of this (ie. renewables as power sources) and less of that (new coal mines, for example!)
- On a different branch… If you’d like to (potentially) get tears in your eyes from a delicate, strong, beautiful song, click this link to Loren Kate’s I’ll Be.
- More Australian made creative beauty: Love in Lockdown brought to you by Gristmill (Librarians TV series, Upper Middle Bogan, and more) – a short, lovely complete story.
- And, Gut Feeling. Such a great premise – I love imagining my gut as a super intuitive character with funky style. Gosh I would love this as an ongoing series to see what plays out for everyone and their gut instincts!
How’s your section of the world going?
Virtual hugs, dear one,
Meg :)
PS Want some happy art cards to send to loved ones? Check out my art card page here … There are many dozens to choose from, all updated as of last week!
PS2 I have an editing whiz on the project with me to get our heart photos into a video. Stay tuned!