Turning a Bad Morning Around

Snow White Goes Street!

Hi there! Okay, so this isn't really Snow White, but I'll explain it in a moment. The reason for the title is that this morning was not a good one for me. It was just unpleasant, and there were lots of little things that just got on my nerves. First of all, I didn't sleep good at all last night. I guess I was just too jazzed by doing last night's post. That's the problem with doing these deep, creative things, is that they can make you go bonkers. That happens to me sometimes.

Anyway, my circadian rhythms, or whatever, decided "Hey, we're not gonna fall asleep" until about 1:30 in the morning, after an hour and a half of tossing and turning. Then I woke up at 6 this morning, but couldn't get back to sleep, so I was just lying there in bed, with my mind running for another 2 hours. Then I got up, feeling kind of crappy to begin with. Then someone in my family went off on me when I didn't pay enough attention to them. After this, I had that feeling that I sometimes encounter.

This is when I get burned out, overwhelmed by things going on. In the extreme, this can make me feel depressed, really anxious about almost everything, or mad about the world. I often feel some blend of these at the same time. Fortunately, after I got some work done, and then set to work getting this post ready. At that point, what remained of the crappy feeling I had in the morning was receding.

That's the good thing about my mood lately. Even when I get really bent out of shape, I can recognize that things are going wrong, and decide I want to set today on course. I had heard about how having a bad morning can make the whole rest of your day suck. I didn't want that to happen this morning. Thankfully, it didn't happen. The downside is that, still, I feel, simultaneously, like there is very little I can do to change the course of my life in a meaningful way, and that I am not doing enough. Or what I am doing is not good enough, or complete enough, or truthful enough, or, well, you get the idea.

Anyway, this can be hard to really tough to deal with sometimes. Onto the point of this drawing. I came up with this idea as I was working on the Occupy Wall Street-themed illustration. I thought it would be good to illustrate a woman who was an angel, like a Divine Feminine figure, holding a machine gun, in this case, an M16 military-style rifle. The key to the angel figure, is that if you blow it up, and look closely at her face, you see that she has a warm, open expression on her face. I wanted her to show the warmth, love, and compassion in her face, while showing a strong, leveling, uncompromising strength.

So there are two ways you could look at this. Is she a good angel with a bad side, or a bad angel with a good side? Usually, movies, games, or books with really violent overtones freak me out, but I have to admit that when I thought of that subtitle at the top, I got amused when I thought of the toughest street gangs losing firefights to, and living in terror of, this "Snow White" figure. Is that wrong, to be bothered by really violent stuff, yet to enjoy that kind of dark humor?

My two themes here are love and truth. Here, the angel has the aura of absolute love and compassion in the way she looks toward the viewer. Yet, she has the often harsh power of truth and justice. I symbolized it as an M16 here to show how these two can exist in the same entity, in the form of gentleness and strength.

Also, as you have probably seen here, I think female symbolism is a fascinating thing to use in my drawings. I don't know why, but for many years, I have loved to include female subjects in these artistic endeavours. Maybe because women have always been an enigma to me. There is something about them that is interesting and foreign, but also appealing in some ways. So, yes, I do include women in my drawings. Anyway, that's it for now. I will have some more posts up for you soon. See ya guys, and keep wondering!