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stephenfell.net is relaunching! I’m relaunching my website with a new design and a new focus on sharing my sketches, drawings, and photography. I want to share my work with friends and followers without chasing algorithms or training models with my content. I’ve switched from WordPress to Hugo because I was tired of all the plugins and constant updates and having my site hijacked to send spam. I want to have a simple, fast, and secure site that I can control and maintain without worrying about all the overhead of WordPress.

Listening to and seeing birds offers proven mental health benefits, reducing anxiety, stress, and paranoia while enhancing mood. In early February, I put up a bird feeder that I got for my birthday - it’s one of those ones that has a camera in it so you can login and watch the birds dig through the seeds, finding the ones they like best. Every day since, there has been a feeding frenzy of redpolls, red breasted nuthatches, chickadees, Steller’s jays, European starlings, magpies and the occasional squirrel. ...

The other day I put up the bird feeder that my wife had given me for my birthday last month. It’s one of those feeders with a camera so you can see the birds up close. Within 2 hours, we had a squirrel and shortly after that, chickadees, nuthatches and redpolls. I’m getting more than a hundred pings each day with all the hungry birds that come to feed. Here’s a drawing of one of my visitors, a chickadee who came to rest on one of the lower branches of our oak tree. I drew this on a sticky note to save time and show that you can draw with any kind of supplies that you might have lying around, even when you’re taking a short break at work :-) ...

Last summer was the first time we’ve been dip-netting in almost 11 years. So we’ve been eating our haul of salmon almost once a week this winter, which is probably a net positive for our health. We’re already making plans to go again in the summer, but I couldn’t help but think, at least for a moment, what if the fish ate people? Time lapse of a fish vacuum packing people.

One day I was in the bathroom, washing my hands and with a quick glance down at the sink, I realized that the spacing on the cold and hot water faucet handles appeared to be about the same as one’s eyes. And at that moment I began imagining myself wearing the faucet on my head, almost like a pair of goggles. And I began to think about the symbolism of the water creating a feedback loop from the brain to the eyes and back into the mouth. Maybe I’m drowning in my own thoughts? I don’t know. I will leave that up for interpretation. ...

As I walked out onto the Campbell Creek trail, from the entrance near our house, there was a twittering cacophony of birds. The snow crunched beneath my feet, but the sound was no longer audible. I pointed my camera at the chokecherry bush, holding my breath for steadiness and to prevent moisture from my breath condensing on the now cold glass - the temperature was hovering somewhere just above zero degrees Fahrenheit. ...

Hi everyone. Here’s a quick sketch of a kingfisher that I saw a couple of weeks ago when it was about zero degrees Fahrenheit and most of the water was frozen. The cat tail pond, fed by warm runoff was open and active with ducks and this kingfisher. I saw him swoop down over the water several times to get minnows and other small fish. I spent about 10–15 minutes on this sketch, and the DaVinci Eye app made the whole process so much faster. It helped me lock in the proportions right away—something that would’ve taken much longer if I’d used a grid or other traditional techniques. ...

In midwinter, Anchorage’s Campbell Creek corridor becomes a lifeline for fruit‑eating birds. The trail entrance at Greenhill Way, where residential plantings meet native trees, often holds onto berries longer than the deeper forest sections. This overlap creates a seasonal buffet that draws in nomadic flocks like Bohemian Waxwings—sleek, masked songbirds known for their synchronized movements and soft trilling calls. When the fruit peaks in sugar and softness, waxwings descend in coordinated waves to feed, turning quiet branches into a flurry of motion. ...

I had a weird dream last night so I sketched it in pencil first, scanned it into Microsoft Paint and then added lines and colors, exporting the progress frame by frame into the animation above. The whole process didn’t take too long - in the morning I sketched while drinking my morning coffee and later on I spent about an hour and a half doing the animation. It’s kind of fun to do these! ...

I got some more photos of some robins and dippers today along the Campbell Creek trail. Unfortunately I lost my glasses while crawling in the snow by the riverbank - let me know if you find them.