Fairy Godmother Cartoon

Saturday, June 30th, 2012

Fairy Godmother commission by Amy Crook

I’ve been working with Jo Van Every to create some illustrations she can use in her lectures and with her clients, and this generous lady is one of them. She wanted a fairy godmother to help people doing grant proposals and other academic career thinking to really sit down and wish for whatever they could possibly want, to help un-limit their thinking. We made sure the bag was separate so she can use it for exercises by itself, too, and she’s even got a version that’s just black and white for people to use as a coloring book page.

Cool, huh?

This is what Jo had to say about her illustration:

“I help social science and humanities academics with grant proposals, individually and in workshops. Unlike scientists, humanities profs often have difficulty figuring out what they need the money for. Their frugality muscles are pretty well developed and they sometimes get stuck in a loop where they can’t imagine even asking for more money because they aren’t sure they can justify that. For a recent workshop I asked Amy if she could do a Fairy Godmother that I could use in an exercise to get them thinking about money. Fairy Godmothers don’t ask you to write proposals and justify your budget. They just grant you money, though sometimes they have rules about using it by midnight or whatever. I put different sums of money on cards in a bag and got each small group to pick a number out of the bag and then brainstorm all the research they could do if the Fairy Godmother granted them that amount. Now I use it with individual clients, too. I encourage them to try different numbers on that loot bag and dream.

“The magic thing about a Fairy Godmother is that once you’ve played with just being granted this amount of money, it’s easier to work on the piece where you make a case for how important this work is and justify spending that much money.”

–Jo Van Every

If you’d like something nifty of your own, consider my Be a Cartoon service. As you can see, you don’t even have to use it to become a cartoon yourself if you don’t want to!

Categories: Angels, Cthulhu, and Other Myths, Completed Commissions, Daily Art, People, Figures and Faces
Tags: all rights reserved, commission, copic marker, fairy, jo vanevery, nfs, pen and ink