Saturday, December 27, 2025

2025 Christmas Card Gifts for Friends

Copy of a Vintage Christmas Card
"Master Copy" of a Vintage Christmas Card. Acrylic on Paper 5 x 7 inches.

Christmas Elf With Flamethrower Melting Snowmen
Elf Melting Snowmen With A Flamethrower. Color Pencil on Paper 10 x 7 inches

Jack Frost Bringing in Winter Snow by Alex Ariza
Jack Frost Bringing in Snow. Paper Cut Out and Color Pencil 5 x 7 inches.

Where Are You Santa? by Alex Ariza
Where Are You Santa? Graphite on Paper 10 x 7 inches.

Where Are you Santa? (Interior)
Where Are You Santa? (Interior)

Santa with the Head of Krampus by Alex Ariza
Santa With The Head Of Krampus. Acrylics on Illustration Board 5 x 7 inches.

Mecha Santa vs Krampus by Alex Ariza
Mecha Santa vs Krampus Color Pencil on Paper 10 x 7 inches.

Every year I like to make Christmas cards for my closest friends with the goal of making them laugh or just say - wow. 

While I'd love to say everything from this batch is 100% my work, I cannot. This year I used pre-existing images online from all different places. The Warhammer inspired illustrations are the most blatant rip off I'm guilty of. I used the poses, costumes, lighting - almost everything - and then put a Christmas twist to them. These illustrations are not for commercial purposes and the creation of these cards are more of an hommage and opportunity to produce "master copies" from the original source material.

I'm not practiced enough to come up with these kinds of beautiful and dynamic poses like these illustrators at Warhammer, Blizzard, etc. The vintage looking Christmas card with the little girl and reindeer is another example of copying that work. Once again, I take no ownership of the original image, I just thought it looked cute and wanted to practice copying a well thought out illustration. 

The only original images of the bunch were, Elf Melting Snowmen with a Flamethrower, and, Where Are you Santa? These were fun to make from scratch. I had to do quite a few thumbnail sketches before getting to the finished images, but it was worth it. Unfortunately, I didn't have a lot of time to spend crafting the other cards, which is why I took the somewhat lazy route of copying other people's work.

Every year that I make these cards I try to push myself to make more elaborate images. I'm looking forward to the following year to see what I can come up with.


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