a few quick Christmas thoughts

Elf is an excellent Christmas movie, and I bet I'll still be watching it ten years from now. That's right, it will be a Classic. Great Rankin/Bass touches. Speaking of, I watched a few Rankin/Bass things this year, and boy, some of them are trippy and strange in places.

Lots of little articles lately about the darkness of It's a Wonderful Life. Duh. I love that movie and I don't care who knows it.

A Christmas Story is great, but I'm conflicted about the 24 hour marathon.

Macy's does a great job with the whole Santaland thing. We took our son this past Saturday and were only on line for twenty minutes. The Saturday before Christmas. Very cool. Last year it was more than an hour.

I will improve [have improved [3/11/09] the quality of the holiday card pics, but am glad I put them up, even in the less than perfect photos that they are [were], because it's good to see them all in one place, and I've enjoyed going back and thinking a little about what went into each one.

Driving to Toledo for Christmas. Wish us luck.

Holiday card, 2003

Untitled, linocut with watercolor.

Like the reindeer, I liked the off kilter composition, especially with Santa, as if you're just getting a glimpse of him, like Bigfoot or something. This is another that was kind of labor intensive, hand coloring each one with watercolor after printing the linocut. Two different reds, two different yellows, one blue. And had to be careful because the printing ink I use [Speedball] is water soluble, too. I remember my father liked this one; he said it felt like an old fashioned illustration to him.