They Draw & Cook Holiday Recipe

If you haven’t heard of They Draw & Cook, you should go check it out right now! I love food. I love eating it, smelling it, cooking it, or just looking at it so I was excited to discover TD&C. If you haven’t visited the sight yet (shame on you), it’s a blog dedicated to illustrated recipes. They recently accepted entries for a book they will be publishing and today was the deadline for a holiday recipe contest. The above illustration is my entry into the contest. Click on the image to enlarge. This illustration also fits in with this week’s Illustration Friday topic: “Savour.”

My recipe was inspired by the lovely Sandra Dieckmann who mentioned she was making a Pumpkin & Potato Soup with Sausage. Before she could get me the recipe I had cobbled one together from various pumpkin soup recipes and with a little help from my husband who is the real cook around here. It turned out to be quite delicious and reasonably simple to put together.

The illustration was inspired by my good friends. When I first moved to NYC I lived with 3 lovely ladies in an apartment in Washington Heights. We were all from the midwest, so we often spent Thanksgiving together. We would grocery shop, take a walk around our neighborhood, cook a lavish, rich meal complete with the heaviest cheese we could find (usually triple creme brie), drink, and play Scrabble. The illustration is based on our kitchen there and it gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling thinking back to those days.

Enjoy the recipe and if you make it, please let me know how it goes!

Zero2Illo Spotlight on ‘8: A Kid’s Book Anthology’

Over the weekend, the amazing Jon Woodward of  Zero2Illo posted a feature on the kid’s book anthology I participated in. You can read the feature here. Also be on the lookout for an interview with me on his site about my experience with self-publishing.

Jon has created an amazing site full of resources for illustrators and other freelancers. He has also recently launched a new brand: Then There Were None. Here he creates limited edition collections of clothing and accessories featuring his illustrations of endangered animals. The proceeds go to charitable causes that help protect endangered species. I plan to get my hands on some of his work for holiday gifts as soon as the new collection is launched on November 18th. Please check it out!

And if you still haven’t purchased your copy of ‘8: A Kid’s Book Anthology’ you can pick it up here. And stay tuned for the new episode of Chris Oatley’s Artcast with all the book’s creators that should go live this week!

New Series

Over the course of the last few months I have been working with a campaign, called The Mayor Project out of Colorado Springs, to help elect a full-time mayor (which they don’t currently have). The art director wanted simple, iconic images but they liked my black and white hatching work so they wanted me to add my own edge. These are definitely outside of my normal work, but it was fun to work on something completely different. I would be happy to do more projects like this. Below is an example of the hand-outs that were created using these pieces.