Animal brides, Thanksgiving, selling out, travel

Today I made creamy potato-leek soup while finishing the first
two paintings in a series about mythical animal brides *. I
began with the frog maiden and the girl who married
a crow, and because I know my four readers want to know
what these illustrations could possibly look like,
pictures are in store.

In news unrelated to leeks or animal weddings:
a) Ben and I are looking forward to a quiet Thanksgiving at home.
The meal will be wonderfully similar to last year's (guess I didn't blog about it, if you can imagine that) and the year before's. I can't wait!

b) Check it, I sold a great deal of artwork in my college's recent art sale. Hecks yeah! The sale is an annual event that is celebrated and anticipated in the Twin Cities... every year, the halls of my tiny art school are packed to the gills during the weekend before Thanksgiving. The scene is pretty crazy, actually. People run through the buildings, grabbing artwork from the walls and shoving it into big Ikea-style shopping bags! And as cynical as we students become about art as a commodity in the weeks leading up to this circus, none of us are complaining when the checks arrive.

c) We're thinking about visiting our friend T in Ireland next year. Since the only traveling Ben and I do is when we move to a new state (something we've done a ridiculous number of times, actually), this would be big whoop.

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* and grooms.

I retroactively wish for this.

That's right, I am adding this to my 1981 letter to Santa. Incidentally, did you know that the illustrator who created my girl Holly Hobbie is actually named Holly Hobbie?? How weird and interesting is that?

"Design Your Own Adventist-Style Vegan Dinner Loaf!"

Good news, creative cooking friends! Jennifer
McCann's Magical Loaf Studio is back up! It's
totally waiting to help you design your own
vegan dinner loaf, and it's so cute and fun.
You choose the ingredients and it tells you
how much of everything to use, which is a tidy
way to avoid the heartbreak of a crumbly,
fall-apart dinner loaf. It's also great for
designing gluten-free main-dish cutlets, patties,
and loaves -- just choose GF ingredients in the
binder and carbs categories. Have a blast,
sweeties.

My art + a good cause

The holiday card I designed for Noel House women's shelter in Seattle is now available! It's one of those "a gift has been made in your honor" things and sales benefit homeless women in Seattle.

My school is actually preparing me for a successful career in the visual arts! Hecks yes!

I don't think I've mentioned how well art school is going
lately. Have I? The thing is, things have really clicked
this semester. It happened pretty much right away in
September, when I began my most intensive semester yet
--five illustration classes, including one focusing
entirely on editorial illustration. I felt, almost right
away, that I just knew how to do stuff BETTER than I was
used to doing stuff. I don't think it was simply that I
just had confidence in my work, but who knows? It also
doesn't seem likely that I got better overnight. I know
it was the result of a couple of years of truly hard work,
exposure to good instructors, and access to the right tools.
But whatever it was, professors began reacting to my work
with overwhelming approval and enthusiasm. I was asked to
do a couple of projects outside of school, expanding my
still-limited-but-not-as-limited-as-before professional
experience. And when I put up my work for critique in
class, I almost always feel that my illustrations are at
the top of the class -- a significant change from one year
ago, or even one semester ago.

All of this makes me hopeful and excited about my career,
for probably the first time in my life.