Santa and Sleigh Stamps

The Beyond The Perf website reports, "Finding just the right style became particularly challenging for [Paul] Rogers when art director Howard Paine asked him to design a Santa stamp. The public has seen hundreds, maybe thousands, of images of Santa Claus — including many on past Holiday stamps — and Rogers wanted to make this one distinctive."

Rogers is quoted as saying, "“I kept thinking about those books I had when I was a kid. My mom even had some that she would get out only at Christmas.”

According to the write-up, "Taking their artwork as a model, Rogers made pencil sketches, trying to capture the period feel of the books. He faced the additional challenge of creating an illustration that worked both as a whole and as four individual stamps. At one point, he considered a close-up of Santa’s head, divided into four sections. Even when he settled on Santa and his sleigh, Rogers still had to place each set of reindeer on its own stamp."

Shown above, preliminary sketch for the new Santa and Sleigh stamps.

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