Painting by N.C. Wyeth
New Year’s Day 2016. Thought I’d start 2016 with a few takes on New Year’s Day from some of my favorite illustrators. Wishing everyone good health and good news in the New Year. I’m getting ready and am kind of looking forward to coming back to the blog on a regular basis in a few days.
Painting by Ben Kimberly Prins
Drawing by Howard Pyle
Painting by Norman Rockwell
J.C. Leyendecker 1930
J.C. Leyendecker 1940
J.C. Leyendecker 1942
Redtree Times 
These illustrations are great. The details in the second are perfect — but of course, that’s just the way it was in the late ’50. People really did wear those hats, and my folks always brought me that paper confetti: not the little chopped up pieces of paper kind, but the rolls, that were about a half-inch thick, and that you threw. I see them all over the floor and cabinets in the illustration.
Other bits of perfection? The full ashtray bottom left, and the noisemaker in the largest, bottom left plate. The copper-bottomed pans. The chafing dishes and the aluminum ice cube tray. The matching candy-cane apron and dish towel over his arm.
When I think of the time my mom spent making tiny, shrimp-filled cream puffs for parties like that… Oh, my. But they had a lot of fun, and that’s what counted.
It is the little details that really make that piece so interesting. So many of those details are burnt into memory but forgotten until you see them again, The full ashtrays, the ice cube trays and the noise makers on the floor all make it seem so of that time.
On Fri, Jan 1, 2016 at 5:07 PM, Redtree Times wrote:
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Also, if you notice, she’s aproning up to tackle that mess at nearly 3 a.m. Hubby? he’d just as soon go to bed.