Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from New York City!
This is our Christmas Card that we mailed out this year.  I really don't like when people show the photo of the card you're going to get on their blog or facebook before they mail it. If you are going to use postage, I think you need to give your mailing list a surprise. Otherwise, it's like Oh, thanks for mailing me this picture I already saw online.

Back in August on that night me and Bonnie walked around the Met and saw the Red Tailed Hawk, I saw the sidewalk portrait artists and I knew Bonnie's card had to be one of those portraits.

My first sketch-


I took her to Times Square and I had two different street artists draw her.


They were Chinese dudes who were uncertain of "Christmas Man" and I had to perform Google image searches on my phone. That was a red flag. 

I went home with these 2 funny, but disappointing drawings.


I knew I had to draw this myself. 

I sketched out how I wanted Bonnie to look but ran out of paper so I just pieced these scrap pieces together.


I scanned-in the 3 parts then stitched it together in Photoshop. Then I turned the levels/curves way up/down to make it really black and contrasty.


Passion for the project helped me prepare the whole thing and upload to WinkFlash with cards ordered in about 2 hours.


Even though we didn't use the street artists drawings, we had fun going to Times Square and checking out the windows on the way!

Here's her card from last year


And yes, someday I will photoshop my human baby.  :)
When I have one.