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:-
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