I Knew in a Moment It Must Be St. Nick

Long­time vis­i­tors to my site might recall I have a tra­di­tion around this time of year of doing some­thing San­ta Claus-relat­ed. For awhile, I was­n’t quite sure whether I was going to be able to make it this year, but here we are! It’s a Christ­mas mir­a­cle! (Okay; not really)

This is an unusu­al one. I was work­ing on a Christ­mas-relat­ed project these last weeks that real­ly kicked my butt chas­ing the dead­line. It required a lot of research, and I had to work kind of at or beyond the extent of my abil­i­ties. Sort of out­side my com­fort zone, as I’m real­ly more of a cartoon/comic guy. But as is some­times the case with real­ly chal­leng­ing projects, this end­ed up also very rewarding.

This image was one of the illus­tra­tions gen­er­at­ed for the project: the real St. Nicholas, 4^th cen­tu­ry bish­op of Myra (in mod­ern day Turkey). Also known as Nicholas the Won­der­work­er, he was the real life basis for San­ta Claus. Based on what images I could find online (like old icon paint­ings), I thought an illus­tra­tion with the two of them togeth­er would make for an inter­est­ing comparison.

So in a way, this year you get a “twofer” of San­tas. I guess that’s all, except to wish all my vis­i­tors a very Mer­ry Christ­mas, and all the best in the New Year!