Oh, one thing I *would* recommend: "Hands Off My Eizouken." It's yet another anime taking place in high school (which seems to be the high point of all Japanese cultural life, if I am to believe anime), but it's a fairly lively "slice-of-life" anime that has a focus on art (in that the primary characters want to make their own animated short films).

I've only watched a couple of episodes with Gwendel, but so far they've been quite charming. We haven't gotten further simply because any time I have free time to do/watch stuff with Gwendel, she wants to play Warcraft -- and since she's still at least nominally interested in this anime, I'm not going to go and watch the rest without her. (I've done that sometimes in the past -- like, when we haven't watched another episode of a given series for MONTHS, so I assume she's just not interested -- but then if I let slip that I've done so, she gets very upset. So ... as much as I want to watch more, I'm just going to have to wait a bit.)