Waaaay back in July, I learned that Mandy Patinkin and Kathryn Grody were going to start a podcast called "Don't Listen To Us" with their son Gideon. I emailed a listener question into the show, got the standard "thanks" back, and kind of forgot about it. Yesterday, I was checking emails and saw that not only did I have the proof to approve for my new little book The Grumpy Cactus, I also had an email from the Grody-Patinkin team! They'd accepted my submission! 

I watched Mandy, Kathryn, and Gideon reply to my question with thoughtful answers. You can click the Youtube video below to watch the longer podcast episode. Here's what I submitted: 

I hope that you give the podcast a listen. 

It was a great email day to read about the acceptance of that submission and to look at the proof for Grumpy Cactus. My son actually inspired this little book - he loves Grumpy Cacti. I'm looking forward to seeing it in print - and you can keep up with what's happening with this little story on my books page! 

When I opened my Procreate app this week the apps tarted an automatic download. I hoped there would be some new brushes - and there were! An entire library of new brushes! Just as so many of us write our names with new pens, I remember my art mentor, Katherine Pittman, happily testing new colors. Whenever she chose a new watercolor brand or color, Katherine would sample the paint and write the color on it. I found myself doing the same thing with the Procreate watercolor brushes, but writing the names of the brushes. 

But, the new Procreate brushes feel more realistic than the Art Junky brushes. I liked the way they looked on my test page and I couldn't want to make some piece of art with them to really get a better feel for the way they would work in the app. 

I did not want to use the brushes in my works-in-progress because I did not want to change the feeling or look of ongoing work, so I knew that it would need to be a stand-alone project. I considered working on a butterfly; the monarchs are migrating through my area and they've been so lovely. I settled on a flower. I decided to work on an Iris. My grandmother loved Irises and she had beautiful Irises in her yard. 

I look forward to creating other pieces of art with these new brushes and continuing to discover what they can do and testing the limitations with my style. They were a delightful discovery and a wonderful way to spend my evening. 

Mr. Ages says "Whoever he was...he was brave." So, today, thinking about the end of that little book I sketched out a rat laying on top of ferns. I added Christmas lights because the rats stole them and put them down their main hallway. There are seeds to represent the work as part of The Plan. I added a scrap of paper with NIMH - National Institute of Mental Health - tucked underneath him. 

I’ve always loved writing. I remember working on “books” at home - drawing out characters or a story line and stapling together pieces of paper (I think one of my first stories was about the horrors of a younger sibling). As a teen, I would spend hours typing out story lines and developing characters. I gave up, for a while, on the dream of books until after I had my son. I began to think about Texas animals and wanted to share them in a colorful way. I discovered that I loved illustrating little stories. 

I’ve been making art for decades, but changing the presentation and focusing on characters in illustration was new for me. After writing Animal Friends of West Texas, I worked with an author out of Maryland to bring her story, Daddy Makes Pizza, to life - and it was so much fun! Bats! An Illustrated Fact Book came next, and that was dedicated to my dad, who always adored bats and made sure that we had such a healthy respect for them. I began working on Hercule and his story not long after that and then just sat on it. 

​He shares different tools of his hygiene routine (his toothbrush, his toothpaste, his mouthwash) and his steps in that routine. Then, he goes to bed. It’s the same routine so many of us do before bedtime, and it’s a wonderful way to help elementary aged children have a reference point as they’re building their own routines and working on tooth care. 

I hope that you enjoy reading this darling story as much as I enjoyed creating it. 

In 2023, my little baby had started getting his first sharp, white baby teeth. Caring for those little pearly whites was a main theme on my mind. I couldn't stop thinking about a storybook character who was also learning about taking care of his teeth, and that's how Hercule, the sweet little hippo, came to life (look at him, isn't he the most precious thing?). Creative projects in those early days of infancy were easier for me to work on than the are now; my time is spent divided between my toddler and my newborn. Old projects have started sifting through the hustle of every day life and Hercule, once again, came into focus. I realized that he’s been suspended as a work in progress for two years - a long time for a little hippo. I’ve put so much time, work, and love into creating Hercule that it wasn’t fair to me or to him to keep him hidden away. 

I remember being so afraid to publish my own books. In the past, there hasn't been the same level of legitimacy with self-publishing as there is today. The world of book publishing is a complex one: the big houses get thousands of manuscripts and pitches, there are huge support groups for self-publishing authors, and there are predatory publishing houses that want you to pay thousands of dollars for formatting, illustrations, and expect you to self-promote. The complex options of publishing kept my Hercule project shelved, along with life events, for a while. 

on a little blue stool in front of his bathroom sink and we brush his teeth. He’s started talking about the colors of his tooth brush or seeing the new electric tooth brush that he’s still adjusting to (it looks like a dinosaur!). This bedtime ritual is reflected in Hercule’s little story, as he stands before his own sink and brushes his teeth with his blue tooth brush.

A few nights ago, our toddler started talking about a mermaid chicken. We had no idea what he was talking about or where he could have seen something like a mermaid chicken. He was VERY insistent about the mermaid chicken. These interactions became one of the times that I am grateful to be an artist and illustrator. We put him to bed, still talking about the mermaid chicken (he even woke up in the middle of the night to talk about his fishy bird). In the morning, I showed him a custom illustration that he immediately identified with excitement - a MERMAID CHICKEN! 

Designing Coral Cluck and bringing her to life brought me so much joy. I hope that you love her the way that our family does, too! 

I had my artwork at a gallery outside of Terlingua, Texas. The gallery has closed, so my artwork is more readily available in the San Angelo area. I've had a few pieces on display at the Zero One Taproom. Recently, I sold a donkey painting that had been part of a nativity set I painted in 2020. I filled that spot with this digital work that I printed on metal. 

I've been working on some digital pieces and I've printed all of them on metal. They look great! If you're in the area, I hope you check it out. I can't wait for this camouflaged jackrabbit to find its home! 

Meta has been using images uploaded to its site to train its AI - and you can now generate your own images via Meta AI using these stolen images. Just because it is legal ( if you're a user, you did agree to the terms and conditions), doesn't mean it's ethical. Meta is certainly not ethical. 

It is possible to resist AI - even if the resistance is small. Do not use it. Do not allow your art to train it. Turn off features in apps and on websites that automatically give the site permission to use your information to train its AI (and if you can't opt out, leave the platform). It is important, coming into an age of unregulated tech growth and AI expansion, that we do what we can and we do that when we can. So, I am doing what I can right now. In the new year, I will be focusing on a more intentional use of social media. This looks like no longer sharing new pieces of art to Facebook or Instagram. I will be sharing art here, to my website, and occasionally to BlueSky (for now). I am no longer on Twitter. I did have a blog and newsletter through Substack, but they also have a Nazi problem and I do not want to continue supporting that platform (Jonathan Katz wrote an article about this for The Atlantic in 2023 and it has not improved). 

Why is this so important? Not only is art my form of self-expression and self-connection, art is also a form of resistance. Engaging art and considering the message of the artists causes the viewer to pause for a moment and take in a different kind of message. Consider the work of Francisco Goya and his Third of May 1808 painting about the Spanish resistance to Napoleon - the artwork moves away from traditionally religious themes found in art during the early 1800s and instead focuses on the horrors of war. Pablo Picasso's Guernica is a powerful anti-war piece of art, depicting the suffering and chaos of the Spanish Civil War. The work Soldiers and Students by Jacob Lawrence captures moments of fear during desegregation in the United States. Art, always valuable, makes important cultural statements. 

Moving my artwork off of Meta platforms and away from X will give me the space to talk more about the intentionality behind my work. I am bringing my blog back. I will post links to my blog posts on Meta, but I will not share new artwork to its platforms. I hope to see you here. 

How did I not write a blog post at all during the month of January? I guess it was good to take a break. We had a lot going on during the month of December. My family and I were anticipating celebrating our son's second Christmas with our family and a new cousin. Then, we caught COVID and our household was sick for twenty-five days (that's how long it took to have three negative tests). Obviously, art did not happen during that period of time. Rest and recovery was the priority. This also meant Christmas was small and only with the three of us and four fur babies. It wasn't really what we had planned. We welcomed in the new year in isolation - and with a miscarriage. It was devastating. So, I've been taking a little bit of a break. And that's ok. So, no art and no blogs for January. 

I had decided that I needed to talk to a career coach to figure out what I wanted to do, exactly, with my skillset. And in the week that I was supposed to meet with one I had someone ask for a print to be sent to Virginia, had someone buy a children's book, had someone tell me they regretted not buying an original I had for sale a few years ago, and had a gallery space ask for more art. So, I don't think that my issue is my art - my issue is marketing. The career coach agreed. 

I left Etsy last year because of the fee structure. I don't think that it's a good idea for my art to stay there. A lot of work (time and money, too) went into building my Etsy shop and their fee structure made it very difficult to feel like that was a productive use of my time. In searching for different sales platforms I've finally landed on my shop here - I'd even looked at moving to a different hosting site. 

This month I am continuing to focus on changing my marketing strategy. That looks like more art-focused Twitter posts (because I do a lot of shit posting on that site, don't we all?), focused TikTok's, focused Reels, and focused posting on Facebook and Instagram. It's been really hard to shift away from Etsy - I just had to pay money and enter keywords and a lot of the marketing was taken care of for me. So, I'm trying to figure out. marketing over here. Thanks, as always, for coming along on this journey. It's been a lot of change in four years and I can't wait to see where 2024 takes us!