Redneck in the Headlights
Last year I decided to create a Christmas card. It was the first time I attempted something of the sort, and well I decided then I wanted to do it again. I vowed I’d start earlier and finish quicker. It didn’t quite happen that way. Imagine that.
Like last year I decided to do something humorous. Following the same theme as last year I did something I find equally so. I began this about a week and a half before Thanksgiving, and I didn’t finish it until Mid-December. I did start earlier, but it sure as hell took me longer this time around than it did the previous year’s. The illustration is of a redneck showing off his newest kill, Rudolph. I decided to make the redneck as nasty as I could. He had to exhibit a lot of the qualities people despise in Rednecks such as poor personal hygiene and exhibitions of sheer idiocy such as the case here of the necessity to mount dead animals on the wall. To add insult to injury he’s mounted Rudolph.
This wasn’t terribly difficult to draw for me, but it was indeed terribly time consuming so much that I actually never finished it. In my sketches I had Christmas lights hanging from Rudolph’s antlers, but I set myself an unchanging deadline of December 15th, and I just never got to painting the Christmas lights. Also I planned on a wood panel background as well. I never reached that point either, and if I did I think the picture would have better portrayed the idea that Rudolph was mounted on the wall. As it is it is a bit ambiguous; certainly it’s ambiguous as to where they’re at as it’s just a void of darkness behind them. I’m a bit disappointed in the fact that I didn’t get to finish it like I wanted, but I would still be painting it at this moment as I’d continuously make additions and improvements to it. I usually have to set myself a deadline on these things.
Unlike this year I didn’t have any emergency to attend to which diverted me from sending out the cards, but the process of getting them out wasn’t a smooth one either. Instead of printing the cards myself I decided to get them printed which was a huge mistake. The printing quality was complete garbage where the printers simply printed 11×17 sheets of paper of the image out on a laser printer. Last year I printed something like a 1740 dpi image out using a very high quality inkjet printer. I sent 600 dpi images to the printer to print this time where they downscaled to 150 dpi before printing. Much of the detail and color was simply not there where every minute detail could be seen on last year’s and even more with a magnifying glass. Needless to say I was greatly crestfallen in the quality of the card’s printing, especially knowing I could have done much better myself. I didn’t ship them out until the Monday before Christmas knowing full well foreigners wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in Hell of getting theirs before the big day. Only one of the cards I sent to the United Kingdom has even arrived by the time of this writing which has been another disappointment. Canada’s post wasn’t much better either with cards arriving in Germany two days before they reached a house about 100 km from the US border. Two other packages sent there — one before the card was sent — hasn’t arrived yet.
Generally the response has been quite positive to the card. I was worried some people might be absolutely offended by it. In fact, the only people to be offended by the card have been family. One of my aunts thought I was angry with her despite the note on the back giving no indication of my being angry with her. Other family members weren’t so critical, but they all expressed a similar opinion that I should do something much less nasty next year.