Assembly walkthroughs, information about the artists, and miscellaneous digressions about the four puzzles that I reviewed in Part 1. (about 6500 words; 55 photos)
Thank you for this comprehensive posting, Bill. By the way, your inclusion of a "spoiler alert" may well matter to some folks, but I'm not personally worried about anything like that. Unless this were one of the "murder mystery" puzzles, I would not care what details you shared with me before myself buying or otherwise getting to assemble one of the the puzzles under discussion.
I do not remember seeing the Life magazine cover with "The Flapper" before, though I do remember seeing the cover with "A Modern Witch." That latter image is the one I personally prefer.
I found the story of the Leyendecker brothers interesting, and I also looked up Frank Leyendecker via Google. I felt oddly pleased to know they'd worked in Chicago, my erstwhile hometown, plus that they'd palled around with Norman Rockwell, one of my favourite illustrators. I was very sorry to learn, though, that Frank Leyendecker's life seemed tragic and too short.
I really liked seeing a fairly recent photo of the street scene pictured in Van Gogh's "Café Terrace at Night." I didn't personally care, though, for the image of Winston Churchill shown at the end of your current essay. It's not your fault, of course, and it may seem like a dumb thing for me to say about a posthumous depiction, but I don't feel it looks "alive" enough. Churchill has always fascinated me, and I've often thought of him as epitomizing strong life force.
Thanks once again, for sharing your hobby with us.
Thank you for this comprehensive posting, Bill. By the way, your inclusion of a "spoiler alert" may well matter to some folks, but I'm not personally worried about anything like that. Unless this were one of the "murder mystery" puzzles, I would not care what details you shared with me before myself buying or otherwise getting to assemble one of the the puzzles under discussion.
I do not remember seeing the Life magazine cover with "The Flapper" before, though I do remember seeing the cover with "A Modern Witch." That latter image is the one I personally prefer.
I found the story of the Leyendecker brothers interesting, and I also looked up Frank Leyendecker via Google. I felt oddly pleased to know they'd worked in Chicago, my erstwhile hometown, plus that they'd palled around with Norman Rockwell, one of my favourite illustrators. I was very sorry to learn, though, that Frank Leyendecker's life seemed tragic and too short.
I really liked seeing a fairly recent photo of the street scene pictured in Van Gogh's "Café Terrace at Night." I didn't personally care, though, for the image of Winston Churchill shown at the end of your current essay. It's not your fault, of course, and it may seem like a dumb thing for me to say about a posthumous depiction, but I don't feel it looks "alive" enough. Churchill has always fascinated me, and I've often thought of him as epitomizing strong life force.
Thanks once again, for sharing your hobby with us.
Sincerely, Greg Skala