Vegetarian Taco Soup Recipe

I love browsing through They Draw and Cook for both for the actual recipes and for some illustration inspiration. It’s an ever-growing collection of recipes that have been illustrated by artists from around the world, so there’s a huge variety of styles. During one illustration class at Kent State, we created recipes for the website, so I’ve been a fan of it ever since.

They recently announced a “Call for Recipes” for soups, and knew that I had to submit one! I’m a huge fan of soup, and I think this is one of my favorites: Vegetarian Taco Soup. It’s full of so much flavor that I think my husband forgets that it’s meatless. I’m not a vegetarian, but I have been cutting back my meat intake for health and moral reasons. Which led me to the idea of illustrating an animal eating this soup – especially a cow, since a lot of Mexican-inspired meals contain ground beef!

I had fun with this and went with a “messy” digital style – lots of texture and splatter brushes! I think that style suits me well, because I always end up coming back to it. I usually get to a point in the illustration and wonder what more I can add to it, then add in some water color texture to give it more depth. And I’m usually happy with the end result!

In this case, They Draw and Cook had a deadline to submit soup recipes to be considered to be printed in their next recipe book. I actually prefer to work on projects with deadlines, even if they’re for fun like this one. That being said, I hope to submit more recipes on their website for fun and keep practicing my illustration skills.

Here’s the image full-size, so you can read all the ingredients and try out the recipe, and here’s the illustration on They Draw and Cook.