Newcomers to D.C. have a (not unwarranted) reputation for acting like they discovered Jazz in the Garden and fawning over Jose Andres restaurants before hightailing it off to grad school two years later. Every once in a while, though, someone with a fresh perspective proves the stereotype wrong, whose outsider insights offer a new take on everyday D.C. life. For the past seven months, Carlos Carmonamedina has been doing that every week through witty, poignant, colorful illustrations—and sharing them on Reddit.

“There’s this stereotype of the city being a little more gray if you compare it to New York City, or even Baltimore,” Carmonamedina says. “But D.C. has a lot of things to offer … there’s a very creative vibe.” Yet residents rarely see the city they experience reflected in lifeless postcards of the monuments.

“I have made a little tour of the souvenir shops. There is this gap that the illustrations could fill,” he says, charitably not directly trashing the neon hats or mugs plastered with stale images of the White House.

It’s not that Carmonamedina’s work is entirely devoid of scenes like the cherry blossoms or monuments. It is just that when those familiar sights do show up, they tend to show more than just a picturesque view. In one, the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry serves as the background for a woman pushing a daycare stroller filled with children—a sight that most any Washingtonian will recognize. In another, the Lincoln Memorial is framed by fireworks—while a family’s t-shirts read “Taxation Without Representation.”

Carmonamedina’s background in curating comics shines through. Look closer at that stroller image and you’ll see that one of the kids has dropped a teddy bear, and another has a telltale scowl on her face. In another, Washingtonians trudge through the freshly shoveled sidewalks after the blizzard—with a (semi) famous mural of bike riding cows in the background. “I’m really keen on this idea of narratives in image,” Carmonamedina says. “I also like to make people smile a little bit.”

After moving from his native Mexico to Romania, where he studied painting, Carmonamedina spent a few years in eastern Europe, curating gallery shows and taking part in exhibitions. When his wife was offered a position at American University and they packed up to move here last August, it was not only Carmonamedina’s first time in the District, it was his first time in the United States. “It was a nice surprise. Of all the places we could have landed … culturally speaking, I am so grateful to be in this city.”

To get to know D.C. better, Carmonamedina challenged himself at the beginning of the year to do one ‘postcard’ a week.

“This is not intended to be the average cute landmark picture, but rather a personal view as a foreigner … a way to discover hidden places at the same time that I try to engage with the local community,” he wrote on the inaugural post.

To share them more widely, Carmonamedina posted the images on Reddit and other social media sites, getting an unusually warm reception. Soon, people started asking for prints, which is how he knows the works have hit on something (he’s working on getting an online store up rather than handling each request individually).

It takes Carmonamedina a few days to get from sketching to the final piece for each scene, many of which are inspired by his bike rides around the city or days spent exploring libraries. They’re a hodgepodge of mediums—some digital, some watercolor, some crayon. But each postcard has a touch of whimsy or wonder, and they all show off D.C. rather than official Washington.