Instagram, snippet of 2014

In 2014 I got peer pressured into Instagram. Something along the lines of "You don't instagram, what kind of designer/photographer are you?". So I made an effort to post more than my usual quota: one image a year.

I am not a fan of a lot of the filters, and even when I apply one, I manually tweak all the settings. I am however a sucker for the tilt shift since it creates that faux depth of field that I miss with "real camera" photography. Also the square format always reminds me of 120 film which I miss dearly. I take thousands of iphone photos but for some reason instagraming and tagging them does not come naturally to me. Perhaps because most of the pictures on my phone are cat ones and I think the internet has enough cats for now.

I included the last one as a self portrait mostly because I like the grungy look of the background. Odd how a selfie really is just a self portrait, but that term somehow cheapens it. Don't get me wrong there are lots of pros to cellphone photography, but I miss my actual camera. Even more so, I miss film. I do like the ease of taking out your phone and capturing something on the spot, like for example a sleeping bird you find on a fire hydrant (pic. 1). There is no longer that "Oh, No! I don't have my camera on me!". But I do miss a real lens and I will have to make it a point to take out my actual camera and take some photos this year.

    

Be merry and bright!

Happy holidays!

Coming to the end of this series. It's possible this will become a holiday set of 10 cards for next year, so there might be two more additions at some point, although it's hard to work on things offseason since you need the holiday spirit.

Winter Birds

Making cardinals look cute was a bit of a challenge, since they are just naturally angry looking. I should've gone with chickadees, since I've always loved them. I remember when I was little I always felt bad for the poor chickadees freezing out in the cold and was so confused why they didn't migrate with the rest of the birds. I thought maybe they were really smart and stayed behind so they could have all the crumbs to themselves without sharing.

Holiday cheer

Here are some cute deer tangled up in lights.

Time to get a Xmas tree

Yes, yes... I like foxes. And they like Christmas :)

Polar Bear Monday

Just some polar bears having fun in the snow.

Caroling Chipmunks

Here's a family of caroling chipmunks for you... and before Thanksgiving? How dare they! The sketch had 5 of them, since I love groups of 5, but I'm an only child and I decided to make it my family of chipmunks.

Sketch. The other two from that will have to make it in a different illustration.