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January 2026 I have been thinking a lot lately about how much I love books. Which I'm sure is no surprise to you pen pal, since I do talk about books quite a lot. Most of my time these days is heavily dedicated to them in some way or another. I’m either working on my own book, the chapter books or the picture books. Or I’m working on a book for someone else, doing a read for a friend or a cover for a client or illustrations for a client. Or I’m working at the used and new bookstore in town, talking to customers about what we’ve been reading lately. Or… I’m reading. I have never counted how many books I read in a year before. I know that 2025 was a very reading heavy year. I managed 55 books (I read a few more after sending my last newsletter), and that’s a lot! I’m sure I was reading only 12 a year or less for most of my life. Especially when I was in school still. It’s hard to imagine that for more than a third of my life I really was not that interested in reading, and I didn’t start branching out of my silly little YA Fantasy corner until I was nearly 30. I didn’t decide to focus my energy on storytelling and illustrating until 2018. It’s amazing how something can go from being on the sidelines to being your whole world! I remember distinctly the first books that made me actually want to read. (Granted, my dad read the Lord of the Rings aloud to my brother and I at least twice in my childhood, but I didn’t totally pay attention most of the time.) In grade school my classroom had a tiny book a bout the life of Annie Oakley, and for some reason I read that repeatedly. That’s the only book I remember caring about. I was entirely disinterested until I was nearly 12, and I was give two Advance Reader Copies by my grandmother. One was book 2 in the original Warrior Cats series by Erin Hunter, and the other was The Treekeepers by Susan McGee Britton. I usually didn’t even read the books I was given, but for some reason this time I did, and I think it was because of the cover art. I really, really liked both—both the cover art and the story within. I then was recommended the Black Cauldron series by my older brother and I DEVOURED it. And then the doors opened to me and I actually wanted to read. I got lost in the weeds a bit with my teenage years, falling prey to the Twilight fandom. But I kept my head above water with other gems like Gunnerkrigg Court, all the Tamora Pierce books, finding Jane Austen charming, and eventually creeping farther and farther afield. I still prefer to read fantasy and scifi, but I’ve read a much wider range than ever before. Books are just amazing. They can take you places and teach you things and hold you safely when the world is too much but also take you out into it at the same time. They can be sacred or ridiculous. Humans can do a lot of weird and uncool stuff but MAN did we get it right with books. And books lead to libraries! And how magical and amazing are libraries, am I right?  Well, anyway. All that to say I’ve got a BOOK RELEASE COMING UP SOON! More of a re-release. A project I didn't plan on starting and COMPLETING in 2025, but hey, when inspiration strikes, I go with the flow! In about two months, I have updated Be Kind to Me to match my current skill as an artist, and I will finally have it available, cheaper and easier, through Barnes & Noble! No more overpriced copies only on Etsy or at shows, oh no. It will even be for sale at my local bookstore. Expect a launch email coming soon! I have been wracking my brain for how I can offer some kind of bonus to all those who’ve already purchased the book. I’m really sorry to say I can’t think of a good way to do anything, other than to say THANK YOU and I hope you’ve enjoyed it and I hope you aren’t too mad at me for not just making it really good to begin with. It was my first ever self published book and I went small on purpose. I have grown, and the new Be Kind to Me is a beautiful reflection of that.  I recently learned that this is a real thing that your brain really will do to you. We are wired to seek out what is familiar, and to associate that with “normal” and “safe” even if what you’ve lived with most of your life is a house on fire. I’d heard of this and thought it sounded ridiculous, even performative. Surely these people know better and are just… looking for attention or something. They’re somehow doing it on purpose. Right? ...Right? My personal never ending demon has been my self hatred. Its been present and noisy and non stop since I was very little. It put me in a never ending state of distress and freeze and anxiety. Thanks to LOTS of teachers and hard work and hard lessons and therapy and brainspotting, I don’t feel that way so much anymore. In fact I feel a significant amount of affection and care towards myself. This is VERY new for me, like, it really shifted in early December. It is almost surreal. So surreal, in fact, that I found myself struggling with *intrusive thoughts* almost immediately after. A big thing I’d been concerned about finally worked out, and I was suddenly faced with NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT. Everything going on (in my immediate personal circle) was quite manageable or even just good. I felt calm and grounded and safe and cool with myself and… that was the most alien feeling to my nervous system. Still IS alien. So what did it do? It started reaching for SOMETHING, ANYTHING to freak out about. Imagining accidentally cutting my fingers off with scissors, telling me my electric blanket was going to electrocute me, fixating on scary news stories about people getting attacked and telling me to be hyperventilate at bedtime, giving me the stomach-drop sensation, especially when I was trying to eat. When I described this to my therapist she actually laughed. “I’m not surprised,” she said. “You’ve been so disregulated your whole life that being regulated too weird.” She assured me it will level out, and the grounded safe feeling will become normal to me and my body won’t chase the high of anxiety to feel the old “normal” again. I just have to give it time, and in the meantime make comics about the old me so I can meet its hunger for PANIC with humor and compassion. I am grateful for my growth, but man, human beings are strange indeed.  My word for the year finally came to me. I know it’s the trendy thing to do right now, to pick a word that’s your mantra or theme for the year. I wasn’t going to bother, but I had one jump out at me. I’ve been OBSESSED with the music of Doe Paoro, and one of her albums is titled Soft Power. I like that concept a lot. To me, that means being like a cat. Obviously literally soft. But also cuddly, sweet, patient, all the wonderful soft things cats are. But cats are also deadly. They are the models of boundaries. They tolerate no nonsense. That’s the energy I want to bring into 2026. Not to be overbearing and domineering with power, but soft, willing to stand up for myself, independent but loving. Soft power.  Are you taking my advice from my last newsletter? Are you giving yourself a time of rest? I hope that you are. I hope you’re letting winter be winter (if you’re a northern hemisphere dweller like myself) and that you are allowing for as much hibernation as you can get away with in this crazy western capitalist culture we live in. (And don’t forget, if you didn’t get a chance to read the last newsletter, you can find it on my website in the blog section.)
I recommended reading lots of books and playing Animal Crossing. Hoping you are well and warm, Lara Jean
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Farewell, 2025! I’d like to invite you to join me in participating in the new year very differently than the typical modern western culture demands. Instead of racing into the start of 2026 like a gun has gone off and now you have to RUN, as if this is the time to push push push! Resolutions! Pressure to be your perfect self! In the darkest coldest part of the year, start doing ALL THE THINGS BETTER!—I have a different suggestion, hear me out... Maybe we should take a clue from ALL OF NATURE AROUND US and treat the new year like EVERYTHING ELSE ON (our half of) THE PLANET does in winter. Release and rest. This is a time for reflection and letting go of things that no longer serve us. Don’t overwhelm yourself with new habits, don’t start a thousand new projects. Give yourself an opportunity to rest. Shed your old tired leaves, lay down your burdens, reflect on what you’ve managed to achieve and whether through in the spring and summer and autumn that we’ve just left behind. Celebrate wins, learn from losses, and TAKE A BREAK. You can still do a little dreaming, think about what you’d like to start fresh with when the weather shifts to spring. SPRING is the time for starting new habits. We have the energy of the earth behind us. (Assuming you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, if you’re not, reverse accordingly lol). This isn't my idea alone, I have seen a lot of people starting to talk about this. It's such a good idea. In the spirit of this, I’m going to reflect on how 2025 went for me with no pressure to set intentions for 2026 that I start blasting away at January 1st.  At the start of 2025 I had set a couple of goals for myself (like a fool, ignoring the fact that it was winter and I was not going to want to do anything for months and months, and then Unexpected Things would happen and I’d end up going on a path unplanned). I wanted to: 1. Finish all the illustrations for Little Faun 1 2. Finish writing Little Faun 3 3. Make progress on illustrations for a new kids book 4. Be able to do 1 unassisted pull up 5. Travel to Europe to visit a friend in France I achieved 0 of these goals. YAY!!! I still have 3 or 4 unfinished Faun 1 illustrations. Faun 3 has been in rewrite purgatory all year and I’ve REALLY struggled with it. And I didn’t do squat on my own kid’s book… actually I remember now that I started an illustration and it’s like… 25% done, tucked away somewhere. Pullups are really heckin difficult, and some days I still can't do it unassisted. My passport has not been touched since I got it 3 years ago or whatever it’s been, and my France travel money fund has been raided multiple times for things that were definitely not traveling to France. Most recently, going to cut a Christmas tree. Those things are expensive? If you’ve been reading my newsletters you know that a lot of 2025 felt icky and heavy for me. I had an awful heartfelt struggle with some big grief and despair at the state of the world. The spring was non stop rain, the summer oppressively hot, humid, buggy. September and October were the ONLY months of good weather we had all year, not an exaggeration. I felt Seasonally Depressed all summer. Not the concoction for Getting Things Done. There were a lot of events I overreacted to, handled with not a speck of grace, or panicked about needlessly. Old habits haunted me. When I could have gone with the flow I flailed. When I could have been working on things I read books or spaced out or sulked in my chair. I watched too much tv—and not even anything NEW. I just rewatched Star Trek for the upteenth time.  THAT SAID, I count this year as a big win. Why? Well, first off, I CAN do one unassisted pull up. Sometimes. In fact, at one point I was able to do 3 in a row! I have it on film lol. But fun fact, fitness isn’t linear for me, and if I don’t sleep well or the sun isn’t out I am not as strong. However I have consistently maintained my routine of working out! I show up every week, I am enjoying it and it’s good for my body. WIN. Second, I may not have made the progress I’d hoped on my books, but I DID make progress. Faun 1 only needs 4 more illustrations to be done. At the start of the year I had only 3 illustrations finished out of 15! And I know that Faun 3 is going to be so much better than it was when I finally sort out this rewrite. It needed it. And these things take time. Faun 2 is written and edited and I’m really happy with it. Progress was made, WIN. Though I didn’t make a new kid’s book, I did finally get to celebrate the release of the book I made with my friend Rebekah. I was able to put Wake Up Herbert on Barnes & Noble. I started reworking illustrations from Be Kind to Me for an update version coming… soon? I made a grand total of 15 pet portraits, along with quite a few other pieces for clients, and I’m starting work on a new kid’s book for a client this month! I successfully participated in Artober and along the way felt like I saw improvement in my digital art that I’m excited to bring to future projects. AND LOOK AT ALL THESE PAINTINGS I MADE JUST FOR FUN   I see growth in these compared to what I was making in 2024! Two of these originals are sold and three of them I'm so proud of I'm not willing to sell them (yet). I mostly busted out art at the start of the year, but that’s okay! Life is waves, life is seasons, life is up and down and rest and then rush. It’s all alright. I had some really great shows and a couple kinda lame ones. I know that though I might not have been as productive as I’d hoped, I still made progress. Win. I read a total of 45 books so far this year. (I also want to note that I read my own books several times over in the editing process, so I feel comfortable rounding that up to 50.) I’ve never actually counted how many books I read in a given amount of time, but I think I read more this year than I ever have before in my life. Helped along considerably by being an employee at the local used and new bookstore. It was so good to have a safe place to escape to in the middle of all the crazyness this year. And some of them were really incredible books that have become new favorites.  I’m currently in the middle of reading The Galaxy and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers, and I’d guess I’ll finish at least that before the year is out. I went a little nuts with collecting books this year, thanks to my bookstore job and the discovery of Thriftbooks. I could not be happier. Here are my favorite reads from this year! NOT in order of appreciation, these are all pretty tied. 1. Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers (This one I do want to note that I reread the whole Wayfarers Series and it is in my top ten most favorite book serieseseses of all time.) 2. Guards, Guards! by Terry Pratchett 3. The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune 4. Gentle Chaos by Tyler Gaca 5. Leech by Hiron Ennis Gosh, I just love books SO MUCH. I was also lucky enough to get to see the Blue Ridge Mountains, visit Ashville NC, and I stood for a moment in 3 states at once (Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma). So technically I went to 4 states I’d never been to before. I’m up to 16/50! Kinda cool, even if a few of those I barely saw (standing with a toe in Oklahoma for 30 seconds doesn’t really count). Maybe in 2026 I’ll finally make it to the West Coast. Did I make it to France? Obviously not. I’ve still never been overseas, or really seen the ocean. But I still traveled! How lucky! Even trips to dumpy weird places can be eye opening. I had a lot of little local adventures with my friends, too. I spent a weekend in a treehouse with two of my favorite people. What could be better than that?  Best of all, I think this year I made some big steps to becoming a better friend to myself. I’ve been fortunate in having the help of some really wonderful people (therapists lol) and something has shifted. It’s subtle, but I think I like little Lara a whole lot more than I used to. What an incredible win. I spent plenty of days pouring sadness into my journal, lost and in the dark. Feeling hurt by all the things going HAYWIRE in the world. What a time to be alive. Pretty sure humans have been saying that since we could say anything to each other. I see so much happening that makes me want to become panicked and hateful, but that’s the very thing I’m seeing happen that’s causing all this madness. So I stay whimsical! I stay hopeful! And yeah, sometimes I’m very sad. But I get to share that sadness with friends who feel with me, and I get to use it to fuel my desire to lift up others with some cute little art. New music I fell in love with this year: Bonny Light Horsemen Golden Sun Revival by Trilling Dragons I do have hopes for 2026. I’m going to spend the next few months daydreaming about them and eating lots of soup. When the time is right, things will start happening. What’s meant to be will be! And wouldn’t it be great if Little Faun 1 could finally be published? And Be Kind to Me Revised could be released? And maybe I could finally see a tide pool, do a mural, or something so wonderful I haven’t even though to dream about it? What can you release that didn’t go like you’d hoped? What unexpected joys can you celebrate? What goals were achieved that you can enjoy the fruits of with gratitude? What flopped that you’ve learned from? This is what winter is for. Now tuck yourself in with a good read or a good game and I’ll see you in 2026. Be well and be warm my dear pen pals, thank you for being with me, Lara Jean p.s. Another goal I had for this year: finish this work in progress in time for my newsletter. Oh, well. It will happen in its own time.  June 2025 I had the guts and the foolishness to enter Beautifully Bizarre’s annual art contest. In doing so, I was signed up for their newsletters, and recently received their feature on the work of artist Michael Parks. As I looked at his paintings, I was amazed not only by what some people are able to do with oils, but also by the haunting familiarity of it. I knew I’d never seen it before exactly, but something was ringing a bell. I was so taken with his work that I really wanted one of his art books! They’re all out of print now, but good old Thrift Books had my back and I lucked out and got a copy of this volume.  When I saw the cover online, my jaw dropped. THIS was why I thought I’d seen it before. I was right, I hadn’t actually seen his art—but what I had seen, and stared at for hours and hours, was this painting by Amy Brown.  In her book Amy Brown talks about being inspired by artists like Brian Froud and the writing of Charles deLint, but to my recollection she never mentions how often she borrowed poses from the paintings of Michael Parks. This is in fact the most liberating and wonderful thing I’ve ever discovered.       Both Amy Brown and Michael Parks create uniquely recognizable art—it is theirs and theirs alone. They both have immense bodies of work that, when viewed zoomed out, could not be more different. (I've picked out some of their most similar paintings, but browse their galleries individually and you'll see what I mean. Michael is very surreal and Amy is so whimsical.) They’ve both had successful careers in their own way! But they often repeat a pose or a theme, like multiple studies of the same fantastical photograph. Are the faeries of Amy Brown any less wonderful for standing in the EXACT SAME POSE that Michael Parks used? For occasionally occupying the same mysterious warm stone castle in the sky? Who did it first? Were they both looking at some classical painting I don’t know about? I’ve been reminded of a wonderful realization I had in college when studying the classical masters. Over and over we were shown paintings of the same theme: Bible fan art. Yes, I said it. Jesus as a baby, Jesus on the cross, Jesus performing miracles, Mary holding the crucified Jesus. Over and over and over. The bowl of fruit. The King. And often times we were told that one artist had painted while looking at another artist’s sculpture or fresco. They all used each other’s work as reference, and often created much more similar paintings than even Amy and Michael. We celebrate all of these artists, though. We don’t criticize them for “copying” or being unoriginal. They’re the masters, learning from the art and the world around them. I often get asked “Where do you come up with all these ideas?” at shows, as if I just sit in my room and then out of nowhere I suddenly envision a wizard frog striding off into the trees. Maybe somewhere out there are artists who work like this, but I have a confession: this has almost never been my process. I have nearly always started with looking at a painting that made me go WOW I WANT TO DO THAT. I would copy things my brother drew, the styles of other artists, from Lisa Frank to Stephanie Pui Mun Law. I wish I could be more spontaneous with my inspiration, but it’s often quite direct. This used to be something I shamed myself for. (Confession: I still do this.) I was not a “Real Artist” I was a fake, a copier. I was always stealing from someone else. Did it even come out a perfect copy? Of course not. It ended up with just a little bit of me in there, every time more and more, as I started pulling from more and more varied artists who I wanted to be like. And sometimes that’s just how it goes! That’s how, little by little, you become your own artist. I am a dash of Amy Brown and a heaping spoonful of Lulu Chen, mixed with hints of Brian Froud, Hayao Miyazaki, bits of many others, and something unnameable that might just be me. If you’d left me to sit in a blank room my whole life with no other art to look at, I probably wouldn’t be an artist. Maybe I’d draw swirls or stars, copy the landscape to the best of my ability, but nothing like the paintings I make today. I’ve had the benefit of some incredible teachers, the experience of seeing so much art that made me wonder if maybe I could do something like that too. My chronic perfectionism makes a lot of rules for me. I HAVE to do this and it HAS to be this way. There is so much beautiful, expansive permission in realizing that these rules are absolute hogwash. You absolutely CAN kind of copy something you love. Bring a bit of you to the table along with it and that’s how artists have been doing it for years. Knowing that Carravagio and Amy Brown did that too puts me in better company that I’d realized. If you’re feeling the need for a little jump start to your own creativity, take that as a sign of being human. Delight in it. And maybe check out some of these artists who have, over the years, shaped me into the artist I am today. I now follow over 1000 artists over various social media platforms, many of whom are absolutely awe inspiring in their talent. I could go on for days about artists like Taryn Knight, Laura Bifano, Anna Laura, Arthus Pilorget, Puuung, Josie Wren, it never ends, the talent in the world. I am always reaching to match them and to bring my own voice closer to the front. It’s a journey I’ll be on the rest of my life! AND SO. I hope that when you look at my art it is hauntingly familiar, and yet something entirely new! And on that note, I DO have something entirely new for you! We've seen a lot of other people's art in this newsletter. Here's what I made this month. This painting took many many hours, and it was so much fun. I actually drew the sketch for it in 2021, and was too intimidated to finish it! I knew to do it justice I wanted to paint it big (12x16 inches) and had a distinct lighting envisioned and that was scary until recently. But with a little time and a little practice... or a lot of time and a ton of practice... anything is possible!  I hope you leave feeling inspired and maybe a little more free. Let what speaks to you speak. Just copy the dang thing and enjoy the process.
Hoping you are well and warm (but not too warm, of course), Lara Jean Farewell to April and Hello to May 2025 I want to go on a rant about the anguish I feel at the rise of AI and the current political climate in the US. But when I started writing said rant, it felt wrong, and I deleted the whole thing. Because I think if you’re loyal enough to my work that you’re here as my penpal, there is no need. I realized it is not my job to convince you of the value of traditional art, human art, and stories. It is my job to THANK YOU for being here, to celebrate your presence and your choices, your awareness,your kindness, your empathy. You are a part of the good in the world. Nothing could mean more to me. No doubt you already know about how weird it’s getting out there. What we need to do here is remind ourselves that there are so so so many of us (currently 115 just here in this community!) who care and will be a part of the solution. One that involves libraries, gardens, and beautiful diversity. A home for us all, space for everyone. From human to animal to plant. My job is so very special. I get to help all of us breathe and remember the good in the world. Rest, recovery, hope. Comfort. I actually took a cute little quiz the other day and I was genuinely surprised to get Hope as my Reason for Creating. (I’d expected something like longing/loneliness). But after reading my results, it actually brought me to tears. I truly hope that I DO create from hope. I hope my creations bring you hope. We don’t need any more anguish. Plenty of people are covering the worrying, the raw reality, the awful truth. I am here to dish out the WHIMSY. So now that I’ve acknowledged the elephant in the room and explained why I’ve given it a flower crown and fairy wings, let’s do this. Anyone want a coloring book? In a recent Letter from Love, Elizabeth Gilbert talked about reinvention. “I know, I know—it can feel to you like chaos, the number of different lives that you have already lived. And sometimes you even feel shame about all the different identities you have tried on and then discarded. You wonder why your history has been so full of what could look like disarray. And there is a part of you that longs to be stable, constant, reliable. ...Look around. What do you see on this planet that is stable, constant, and unchanging? It’s not the way of things here in this wild realm to be still. Even rocks change their shape, given enough time. ...And is it not true that the most generative creativity that has ever burst forth from you came out of a certain amount of chaos and upheaval and transformation?” I too want to shame myself for all the things I’ve tried and then discarded. The only thing I know is that I have NO IDEA what I’m doing. And every time I’ve been sure about something, I was most surely setting myself up for a big old embarrassing correction, because I was surely quite wrong. There was a time in my life when I was using tarot a lot and asking over and over what I should do, what was going to happen, where should I go, which path do I take? And the card that kept turning up was THE TOWER. If you know tarot, you know Death and the Devil are not the scary cards in the deck. Death is just something ending so something new can start. It can as easily be the end to pain as pleasure. It rarely, if ever, means a giant boulder is coming to flatten you into a pancake. The Devil warns us when we’re diving into the dark, but that can be by choice, to learn about ourselves. We are not being haunted and have no need of holy water. The Tower on the other hand means your carefully crafted sand castle is COMING DOWN. Get ready for everything to be destroyed, flattened, leveled, exploded, burned, buried, shaken up, bye bye. Yeah it’s making room for something new, but you’re in for one hell of a bonfire. Whee! It can be as welcome as Death or the Devil, depending on your perspective, but for little old me who just wants to GET SOMEWHERE GOOD AND SAFE and NEVER LEAVE, this card is my worst nightmare. But it turned up over and over and over. And now when I see it I laugh (and I cry, it’s a journey, I’m still very afraid lol). Because life is the Tower. Life is one thing ending after another, a constant ending and rebuilding and ending and rebuilding. And it sucks and it’s exhausting and it’s beautiful and it’s the point.   This is a really long-winded way of saying that Google Drive has gone to the dogs and is doing all kinds of stealing and feeding AI (FYI if you don’t know already, all generative AI, chat GPT, etc, involves lots of water waste and usually plagiarism, so please avoid and boycott it) so I had to take all my files off Drive and switch to a different cloud service (I was recommended pCloud) and in the process had to do SO MUCH organizing and going through my laptop, my external hard drive, and Drive to get everything. I found folders of art that I had completely forgotten I had. Everything from blurry dim photos of art I did at 10 years old to scans of the watercolors I thought were my official mature style when I was 20, all of which nobody sees anymore. How vividly I can remember my state of mind when I made these! The way that a song or a smell or a taste can pull you back, my art does times ten. And for the vast majority of my life, I was making art because I was feeling some morbid cocktail of: lost, alone, sad, empty, desperate, not good enough, and afraid. I felt like the world was a horrific war zone I wanted to escape. My art is still escapism, but I’ve shifted the landscape. Instead of diving into images that feed the hurt and try to draw others into my alienation, I heal them. For years I was trying to match up to artists I admired by basically copying them. I put so little of myself into my work, and I had no idea what that would even look like. I didn’t know who I was, and what I did know I hated. So I drew spindle-thin fey women, aloof and sad and starved. They were everything I couldn’t be, super models with wings, ethereal. I strove for photographic perfection, using colored pencils on toned paper to see if I could make it look just like real life. I fought with transparent layers of watercolors that would go muddy and yet still too faint. It was art out of desperation and not any hope or joy. Now I notice I’m frequently drawing squat hairy little critters with softness and wise smiles. And a lot of frogs. My subjects seem to like to be purple and green and brown, lost in bushy eyebrows and freckles. My art now invites you into a place lush with fresh produce, green trees, cozy blankets, friendly bugs and helpful spirits. I’ve left behind the land of judgmental beauty queens and fully embraced the zen of the weird. It’s so much happier here. Everyone is welcome. Have a cup of tea, come and sit. (Have you ever heard it said that people tend to draw characters that look just like the artist? ...I draw a lot of frogs now...)      So here is how it all went. I am the daughter of two artistic nerds. My parents met working at the same architectural firm. And being born in 1992, it was pre computers and cell phones and all that jazz. I had books and paper in abundance. Admittedly, I desperately wanted fashion, television, video games, social activities, flirting, make up, and a more frivolous modern life. I wanted to be loud and silly. (I still feel like I am at war with this part of me who wants to collapse into caring about nothing but fashion and gossip.) But my parents kept it away from me, both accidentally because they were so disinterested, and on purpose to encourage me to be creative. Resentfully I fell into doing whatever my older brother did. And my older brother loved to read, to write, and to draw. I listened to him tell me about whatever books he was reading and I tried to be cool and intellectual like my dad, creative and earthy like my mother. I was often very frustrated and felt like I was stifling myself. In grade school we did book making projects, and at home I made some glue and staple picture books with the ignorant confidence that I was making the best thing ever. At 12 when we moved from the city to the country I was unable to make friends and fell into deep dark depression. I had no friends, no life, and plenty of time to draw, draw, draw. All I did was write and draw. I became more and more introverted, afraid of the world, and by the time I was college age I was most interested in living under a rock. Instead I went to Grand Rapids, MI and was an art major (largely by force, college was just What One Did at that time). I met a guy who encouraged and shoved me to get out of my shell and started vending at the local comic con. As an artist, I started out drawing cats and cute things. I loved cats and pink, I had a very long standing chipmunk obsession. Then at about 10 I discovered manga, and started drawing “anime eyes”. At 13 I discovered Amy Brown and got watercolors and was obsessed with becoming her. I would be a famous watercolor fairy artist. I copied Amy Brown and Jessica Galbareth. Then in crept the obsession with Natalia Pierandri, who helped me branch out into pen and colored pencil sketches, sci-fi and strangeness. In highschool I took private oil painting classes with a local woman, who no doubt found me frustrating because I just wanted to draw FAERIES, not vases and fruit, and I oozed self hatred and insecurity. College was about the same. I finally had unrestricted access to the internet, and branched out, following many artists, both on Deviantart and in the famous art world. Stephanie Pui Mun Law and Larry MacDougall became my idols, and a Russian artist name Anne Weaver. I gritted my teeth through anatomy and life drawing and modern art classes, and graduated. I was then a full time artist, vending at shows, making watercolors like the artists I wasn’t good enough to compare myself to, and starting those photorealistic colored pencil drawings. Depression was still my most constant companion. I never said anything positive about what I made, no matter how many sales and compliments I got.   After about 4 years of doing comic con, I made some new friends who started healing my little soul. Friends I still have today! They showed me I was actually not the only one in love with fantasy books and cartoons. They lifted me up and loved me, shy and small as I was, and they introduced to Steven Universe and Gravity Falls and Over the Garden Wall. OTGW hit me in a wild way, blowing wide open a door that had been cracked for years. The truth was, I didn’t enjoy making the art I was making. I wanted to make art that felt happy. Simpler, sweeter, more cartoonish, softer. So almost immediately after peaking and making what some would no doubt consider the most beautiful and realistic work I'd ever created, I dropped all of it and picked up gouache and I made this:  It was childish, simple, and it brought me pure joy. I abandoned the dark persona that I’d been trying to inhabit (calling myself the Troll Maiden and attempting to match the vibe of Ravendark Creations, my two previous business names) and I picked up the name Lara Jean Doodles. It was 2017, I had been a professional artist for about 5 years. And I started over from scratch. 2018 I started writing and illustrating kid’s books in my new style. From chaos comes inspiration. My first panic attack in 2018 made me realize that if I died because I was too nauseous to eat, I’d be really sad that I’d never made a children’s book. That was when I originally started Wake Up, Herbert! In 2020 during the anxiety of the pandemic I wrote my first middle grade chapter book, Little Faun. The Tower energy has hit me time and time again, and yes, it takes out everything it can. It clears away all the dead and stagnant energy and in its place, wouldn’t you know it, lush and rich new things can grow. Do I still panic and resist every time? Yes. Absolutely. I am human, human, human. I am immensely grateful for and proud of that girl who drew and drew and didn’t know and hated and hurt and felt so very sad. She kept going, and now here I am, making what I make all because of her. Her persistence even when it felt meaningless was in fact the very thing that would lead to the skills I have now and feel genuinely proud of, the friends I can’t imagine not having in my life, and the perspective that makes me so much more gentle and joyful. Oh, the places you’ll go, little Lara! What's next, I wonder? I hope maybe in sharing the many hats I’ve tried, I can encourage you to let yourself try out and discard as many versions of yourself as you want to. We’re kind of here to fuck around and find out, I think. Yeah, we like to believe that the person who lives in the same house and works the same job for 50 years is “doing it right”, stable and reliable and admirable. But are they really? Or are they just stuck, dare I say limited? And as Elizabeth Gilbert said, who would you go to when you’re afraid and lost and hurting—someone whose never left the box they were born in, or someone who has also been everywhere and seen everything they can? “Whose life has ever turned out exactly the way they planned? And if there is somebody out there whose life has gone exactly according to their well-laid plans, would you even want to be friends with them? ...How could they possibly hold your heart, or understand confusion?”     Dear pen pals, I will always be oh so understanding of your confusion, because I myself am so frequently confused. Have been confused all my life, am confused right now, and will continue to be so until the day I die. It’s alright. Here, I drew this cute round soft thing with leaves. I think it will probably make both of us feel better. Until next time, hoping you are well and warm, Lara Jean Quotes taken from Letters from Love by Elizabeth Gilbert  Somewhere between immeasurable grief and just one pull up. January was heavy, heavy, heavy. I have been unable to hold my grief. It has come spilling out of me in ugly, dysregulated bursts. It has shown up with numbness, the desperation to bury myself somewhere nothing can find me. Many tears. So much despair. I feel grief for the people who are afraid for their rights. I feel grief for the people who are so afraid of the world that they are taking away the uniqueness and autonomy of others. I feel grief at the state of the environment, the seemingly never ending calamities that we face that we ourselves have caused. I feel grief for the things I can’t do anything about, all the people and animals I can’t give a safe home to, all the hurts far beyond my reach. I feel grief that I put time and effort into finding a following on instagram, only to have that platform turn into a mess that feeds my creations to AI so that a computer can make art for me. I feel grief for the people we thought we could trust and admire being exposed as flawed and harmful and human. I feel grief that the organic produce I want but struggle to afford to buy comes in a plastic bag. I feel grief for the tiny ladybug that doesn’t know it’s invasive, didn’t come here on purpose or by choice, and didn’t know that trying to winter in my house would lead to its death. I feel grief that no doubt many people would look at this list and scoff and say I’m too sensitive, too emotional, irrational. No person could really feel all that. What’s the point? It is beyond overwhelming.  I find myself drawing big fey creatures holding tiny vulnerable sprouts. They are tender and earthy, and they seem to whisper to the seedling “It will be okay, I’ve got you.” Oh how I want to shed my human skin and become something fey, something integrated with nature, something capable of flitting in and out of reality, going anywhere I want to go. Existing and doing no harm. A creature with magic in its touch. Magic that heals. Magic that renews. I would spend my days planting trees and dancing. …Possibly incessantly pinching and stealing the socks of those who hold great power and choose to use it for harm. How do I get just unhinged enough to start having rapturous visions, I wonder? I want an all knowing, truly all loving mystical god to come shimmying down a silver pole into my studio, blow me a kiss and a wink, bells, whistles, a dance number and a light show. They would tell me “I have a plan, I am in control, I am going to make it all fair and good and okay. I’ll make it so easy and obvious for you, you just keep doing you baby girl. I love you, you’re good, keep painting and don’t worry about a thing.” This god is Tyler Gaca in this vision, ideally. No matter how distraught I get, I wait and wait and it does not happen. The only one here is me. And oh do I feel small, small, small. I do not feel like a fey creature at all. I feel like the seedling, barely beginning, breakable at the slightest touch. How do I make change when I am so very, very small? When I’m not having a meltdown, I reach for the light. I open my little leaves to older and wiser voices. “No one has ever healed through shame.” I want to give in to the immense guilt and shame I feel at just… being a human. Being a part of the problem. But that does not in any way motivate me to unfuck myself. If I believe humans are inherently evil and The Problem, then I get to do nothing, give up, stay lazy. Wilt. Wither. Rot. Just as hurt people will hurt people, so too will healed people heal other people, or so I have been told. Doing work to heal yourself serves everyone, the whole. And with this quote taped on every wall so I see it over and over, written on my forehead, tattooed on my eyeballs, I pick up one tiny thing. One small thing. And I do my best to give it compassion, I give it love. Even when the only tiny little thing I feel able to hold right now is just me. Things that I have been reading and listening to that are helping me learn, cope, and hope:
I’m learning to do pull ups. I can’t even do one. How am I supposed to scale the walls and save the distressed if I can’t do a pull up??? So… I’m trying. I have pull up bands. I strain and grunt and shout “YES I CAN!” to my cats who lazily stare at me from the sunshine on the floor, wondering what their nutty darling human is up to now. I trust that even though I can’t yet, not yet, in time, by inches, bit by bit, some day, I will. (I follow Nourish Move Love for free at home workouts, because seriously, who the heck has enough self confidence and motivation to work out in public?) If you found yourself asking "What could possibly be the point of feeling all that grief?" to you I would gently say: If you're not feeling grief, then you aren't seeing the hurt we are causing. The point is that if we don't see, we can't admit we need to change. We stay numb, we keep performing actions and repeating cycles that hurt others. We have to feel it to see the harm we do. And if we don't find ways to then comfort that grief, we can never become motivated to do something about the things that make us so immeasurably sad. The grief is part of the process. A stepping stone to healing and growing. I think it is not ridiculous at all to be an emotional wreck over the bad in the world. I think maybe my grief is going to lead me to places where I make a difference. For me and for you. I hope you are well. I hope you are warm. I hope you are supported and safe and open to trying to do the work of facing the shadows, facing your own shadow, and turning back to the light over and over and over again. And I dare to hope that maybe my words and my art can help. Lara Jean  P.S. In case anyone is unfamiliar with what’s happened with Instagram and Facebook, they state openly in their user agreement that they have full rights to whatever you post, and they use any images/videos/words posted to train AI. That means they have full rights to my art if I share it there, and they will feed it to AI so that a machine can make copies. This is why most creators are trying to migrate to other apps, and encourage people to do things like sign up for newsletters. I am now pushing my following to Bluesky, tumblr, Cara, and my newsletter.
If you're reading this, THANK YOU for taking the time not only to support me by being here, but also for reading this far! You’re amazing. Your effort and interest and care are so needed and so valuable. Keep it up. If you are wanting prints of any of the new art I've shared in this blog, you can find all of them on my Etsy shop! US shipping is free. I have my kids books in stock there as well. Your support helps me make more art! Also a reminder that if you want letters just like this one delivered right to your email, you can subscribe to my newsletter. Just go to my Commissions page! You can find links to ALL my little internet homes right here! or |
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