Christmas card: 1989

In 1989 I made Christmas cards for my friends, using a system that would later become my standard Christmas card method: I made an original drawing that was photocopied, coloured in by hand (with pencil crayons in this case), cut out, and glued on to a card. This first one depicts a scene of Christmas-carolling friends, which is something we actually did do each Christmas during high school. I remember our grade eleven year being the freezing cold winter at which we lasted for about five houses. But it was still fun. Do people still go Christmas carolling?

I like looking at old work like this, because of the quasi-historical record it provides. For example, of the fourteen friends in the picture, seven still live here in Calgary, and the other seven have been dispersed across the country (and one of them - my brother John - is even farther off, right now). After this, I started making Christmas cards every year, until about 2004. The whole "series" kind of documents my artistic progress (if such it could be called), as well as providing an annual check-in on where my mind was at.

I'll post a new one up here every day (give or take) until Christmas! Let's see, how many days until Christmas? Hm - twelve! (Really, I didn't plan that.) Well, we'll make it work somehow.

Click here for the next Christmas card, from 1990.