Christmas cards past (part 2)

(See Christmas cards past, part 1 below)



The 1998 set of Christmas cards that I painted to send to friends was an eclectic collage of scenes that had come to mind over at least a couple of years of experience.

Possibly the oddest of the bunch is a little sketch of the Tribune Tower in Chicago. The building is the home of the Chicago Tribune where I had spent the summers of 1998 and 1999 working in the news graphics department on a faculty internship. I did a few of these to send to my more journalistically oriented friends.

Also odd in the bunch is the lighthouse, which is no particular lighthouse -- just something I put together mainly because I wanted to experiment with the colors in the sky. And the scene itself was fairly simple to do.

As my wife would say, neither the Tribune Tower nor the lighthouse are very Christmas-y. And my answer is that you can always use your imagination.

The two churches are the Presbyterian (top) and Episcopal (lower) churches in Gainesville, Alabama, a little town in deepest southwest Alabama that my friend Guy Hubbs introduced me to the year before. Gainesville is close to a ghost town now, but in the 19th century, it was a thriving port on the Tombigbee River. There were still some interesting structures in Gainesville, these two churches being among them.

Finally, there is the three birches painting with the barn in the background, half hidden by the snow. That says winter, but not necessarily Christmas.

I paint multiple copies of these scenes and usually wind up sending our 20 to 30 cards. People seem to like them, and some tell me they have the whole collection, although my wife says they are just being nice.

I'll be posting more shortly.

5 x 7, watercolor on Arches 140 CP

Price: not for sale

About the paintings

I usually do three or four of one scene at a time. They take about an hour to draw and paint.