20 x 30, oils on hardboard.

Originally painted for Dragon magazine, but about the time I got this crazy drawing on the board, the art director let me know that they'd decided that Santa was just too cliche, after all. I cut the top title space off the board and painted it as our Christmas card that year. Over the next year or so, it won several awards, including a couple of "best/most original work" awards at s-f conventions. You have to take your very small victories when you can get 'em...

Between the time I started this and the time I finished drawing little dragons with tied-on antlers, I'd composed a Christmas story to go with the painting, which eventually got from my head to other ears and then paper. It involved Santa's daughter, Noel, who has hitched a ride.

There are lots of fun details sprinkled in there, including a couple of inside jokes. One delivery dragon in the lower left is heading to the castle with a bundled-up red-headed boy. Sherrie was eight months pregnant at the time. Fortunately, it turned out to be a boy, or I would've had to go back and change the painting. Nowadays that baby boy is in college, learning animation for video games...