My own family tradition...

I always liked doing something creative for my Christmas cards when I was young, but I was too "young" to have a Christmas card list and really only sent cards to my immediate family and closest friends! One year, I cut out little 'Santa hats' and individually glued them onto photographs of a sea turtle I had taken. It was fun and easy... but as an artist, I felt I needed to at least put a little more effort.

So in 1994, I drew the first "Santa Animal." The Zebra above was drawn in simple pen-and-ink, printed out on a laserjet printer (HP, of course), and then each hat was hand-colored! Thankfully, I didn't have a long list back then.

But think about the technology that was available back then vs. what is available now. We didn't really have high resolution consumer-affordable scanners. We didn't have affordable photo printers that could print on card stock never mind more advanced materials. So I kept the first wave of Santa Animals to simple black/white drawings and then hand-colored the red hats - all 200 of them!

Now as technology evolved (and as an HP employee, I could witness it first-hand), I was able to start investing in amazing large-format scanners (I draw on large paper) and photo-quality inkjet printers that could reproduce color on card-stock quality paper! So I started to experiment with a bit more color as you can see...

The "Nautilus" was one of the earlier 'color' Santa Animals and still one of my favorites! By 2009, my christmas card list was starting to grow and my cards were starting to get popular so the pressure was on for a new animal each year.

What animals do I choose you ask? Good question? I have done many since 1994 - but there are a few rules:

• I do not do fuzzy kittens or puppies. To those who know me, this should not be a surprise
• I will rotate animal class each year. If I drew a mammal one year, perhaps I do a bird or an aquatic creature the next. I try to rotate land, sea, and air - but at least mix up major class.
• There is usually some inside joke or relevance with each animal and those who know, know!

After a visit to Costa Rica, I couldn't resist painting one of my favorite animals - the three toed Sloth! Notice that we are finally able to start dealing with more subtle texture of watercolor painting because once again, the technology of scanning/printing (HP of course ) allowed me to really push the limits!

And since the beginning, I have drawn or painted jellyfish, sharks, lions, rhinos, bees, eagles, parrots, and even tardigrades! Please go see the website in the link if you want to see the rest! Half the fun is choosing the animal! The other half is listening to all the guesses! Do you have a favorite I haven't drawn yet? Let me know!

But the best part of this family tradition is that my daughters share my artistic passion and joined the tradition of drawing a Santa Animal WITH ME! They are both grown up now and doing post-graduate studies - but this they will always be part of the Santa Animal tradition!

So this year, by popular demand, I have finally put the portfolio of Santa Animal cards online so others can share weird animals with their friends over the holidays! Why send your family a winter scene with tree when they might enjoy a great white shark? This project also helped me research the growing industry called Print-on-Demand (PoD) which lets artists sell cards and many other things online and then partner with a back-end printer to fulfill the orders. We work with several PoD providers depending on what material / object one desires. For the holidays, obviously cards are a big hit - but wrapping paper, gift bags, stickers, magnets, and even clothings are also available.

There are also marketplaces like Etsy and RedBubble that happily take another % of your sale but provide a large customer base and brand for the artisan community. And we built a quick website that makes it easy to find all the cards, gifts, and stocking stuffers and then get routed to the correct store. If you want a look, please visit us at:

www.santaanimals.com

All in all, by the time the order is placed, the remaining profit is only enough to pay our intern but that's not the point! This is about sharing a family tradition with the rest of the world so I hope you enjoy them!