2018 Christmas Cards

Since finishing the tram painting a couple of weeks or so ago, I’ve devoted all of my spare art time to making this year’s Christmas Cards. Two years ago, in 2016, I hand painted cards for all of the other teachers in my department at work, for other teachers on the same corridor, and for friends from the old school. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I’d like to think that the recipients at least appreciated the time and effort I put into them, even if they maybe weren’t that impressed with the results.

Last year, in 2017, I didn’t start off with the intention of making a whole stack of cards. However, I did see a sketch of Santa which I was inspired to copy. So I used a well known internet auction site to buy a pack of blank cards and envelopes, and using my trusty sketching pen I went into production. Each card had a different design on it, and the vast majority were ink sketches. In particular I’m a huge fan of the cartoons of Thomas Nast and Sir John Tenniel, and I used many of their designs featuring the American Santa Claus, in Nast’s case, and the very traditional English Father Christmas in Tenniel. I did paint a few cards, but mostly these were reindeer. 

I remembered that last year it was several weeks’ work to produce the 30 or so cards that I made. So this year I bought the cards back towards the end of September. I had 4 cards left over from the ones I made last year. Mind you, looking at them I can understand why I didn’t want to give two of them. They’re not great, and are sat at the bottom of the pile mentally filed as ‘emergency cards’. I began producing cards back at the beginning of November, and gave myself the month to produce the 25 cards I’d need to start with – or 21 cards when the remnants of last year were taken into consideration. I actually made that target last Saturday, so I set a new target of 30. Not quite there yet, but really not so very far away now. I’ve done more painted cards this year, because I really love the work of Norman Rockwell, and some of his Saturday Evening Post covers are perfect Christmas Card ideas.

These are all in the Christmas Card Gallery now, but here’s the ones I’ve produced this year so far:-

FInished tram painting

I don't know if you can quite see the signature, but this is the finished painting. I put about an hour and a half more work into it during artists' group this evening. I didn't do a huge amount. I finished the figures on the right foreground, and tidied up what's going on above them. I added a little more definition to the figures on the left, and did some shadow work on the poster on the side of the tram. I also reduced a bit of the glare on the wet road. Pretty pleased with the outcome at the moment.

More on tram paintings

I was in Amsterdam last Wednesday so I didn't get to work on the tram painting in Artists' Group. However I did find a couple of hours to work this morning. I didn't spend all of that on the acrylic, mind you, but this is where I am with it now.

The figures on the bottom right foreground aren't finished - obviously - and then there' some finishing touches needed in different areas of the painting. But there's really not that much left to do now.

As I said, I didn't spend the whole time this morning on this painting. I also made a quick watercolour sketch of a double decker London tram in the Kingsway tram tunnel. 

The Kingsway tram tunnel was rather unique for the UK. It's a cut and cover tunnel which was exclusively built for single ecker trams, to link the northern and southern London tram networks. As you can see , they did eventually use double decker trams in the tunnel. Part of the tunnel are still there, which is how I came to read about it in the first place, since it features in several works on disused stations of the London Underground railway - go figure. What remains is now grade 2 listed. The last trams passed through in April 1952. I chose to attempt a monochrome sepia tone because I did something similar based on a photograph of an old Mumbles tram a few weeks ago to christen my new 'studio' and I liked the results, which is why I wanted to go the same way with this one.