Papers around the U.S. applied a little visual elbow grease on page one today for Easter Sunday.
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PAGE HEADERS
A number observed the holiday with treatments used in place of a top-of-the-page promo.
I loved the simplicity of this one by the Oshkosh (Wis.) Northwestern, circulation 20,140.
The Kansas City Star went quite a bit more elaborate, with custom-drawn cartoon art.
Note the hand-drawn “the” and “r,” as well as the rabbit ears taking the place of the “y.”
Average daily circulation for the Star is 206,441.
The Courier Press of Evansville, Ind. — circulation 52,721 — came up one of the prettiest, most understated religious hedders today
Not sure whether that’s staff art, file art or stock art. It’s uncredited, sadly.
The Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk ran a gorgeous closeup of an Easter lily.
In addition to that picture — also uncredited, sadly — the Pilot also ran a brief Easter poem by staff reporter Kristen Davis.
Average daily circulation of the Pilot is 156,968.
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FULL PAGES
The State of Columbia, S.C. — circulation 75,615 — led page one with a wonderful photo by staffer Kim Kim Foster-Tobin of Easter luminaria.
The most striking A1 Easter Sunday centerpiece, however, was this one in the Daily Times of Maryville, Tenn.
The cross is made of 16 photos of crosses presumably found in the area by staff shooters. I’ve seen that done with other images but never religious imagery. Nice work.
Average daily circulation of the Daily Times is 21,353.
All of these pages are from the daily archive at the Newseum, of course.
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EASTER WITH THE APPLES
Perhaps it’s been too long since I did something in wet media. Or perhaps it’s the fact that my daughter, now, is 18 and way too old for candy and dying eggs. But I suddenly had a wild hair this weekend to do something creative.
So with a little eye-rolling, my wife boiled a batch of eggs for me…
…so I could spend my Saturday on a set of superhero Easter eggs.
You can tell I’m an ex-cartoonist. I drew on the eggs with a 2B pencil, “inked” them with two sizes of Sharpie-brand markers…
…and then painted them with the cheapest set of watercolor paints I could find at Walmart.
The nine eggs took me longer to “decorate” than I anticipated — a lot longer, in fact.
But I was pretty happy with the result. Note the ears, please, glued onto Batman’s head.
If you’re curious to see more photos of this project taken by my daughter Saturday afternoon, check out my Facebook gallery. This link should work for everybody — even those of you who are not Facebook users.
Shortly after I finished painting those eggs, our sewer line broke. And man, did that stink up the house. As well as leave us without water. So at 2 a.m., we moved into a truly terrible local hotel.
By midafternoon Sunday, however, we were a) Back home again, b) Again with water and sewage service, and c) Not out too much cash. Looks like the problem was with our condo association and not with us. Lucky us.
As if all that wasn’t enough, the Easter Bunny was very kind to me this year. I got a very nice (and very expensive) book I’ve been wanting…
…two sugar-free chocolate rabbits…
…and a Hot Wheels Batmobile I didn’t have.
Oh, how perfect. You’d think I did the Easter Bunny’s shopping myself. Or something.
My daugher got a Twilight book and an action figure of Jacob — the werewolf guy — with his shirt off. My wife got a nice how-to-use-it book for the iPad she’s getting this week.
And they each got a cute little stuffed bunny rabbit and two sugar-free chocolate rabbits. Which is better than the real, live rabbit they said they wanted.
So our Easter was just packed. And — despite the scare late last night — a very, very good one.
I hope your holiday weekend was a good one as well.
