Halloween Returns

Haunted Houses and Ghosts Artist Trading Cards
Phillip Hoyle

You may have to get close to the screen to see the printed house outlines in the five black Artist Trading Cards. I printed red on black and had to highlight them with thin lines in white pencil. The photo doesn't make it quite clear enough. The white figures (eyes, teeth, and hair) are done with paint and white gel pen. 

The ghosts were cut from a photo of a geyser and with tiny holes punched out. They are mounted on a cut-up painting, acrylic washes on watercolor paper, a painting in which the brown got too brown for whatever I was trying to do that day. 

The trade last Thursday evening was fine. I traded over thirty cards and collected some winners! These ATC artists love Halloween and Day of the Dead for the wide variety of often weird images they suggest. One woman came dressed in a black robe and interesting feathered mask. We shared cards and food, and then made cards for another hour and a half. What a nice celebration.

This weekend I decorated the front porch with spiders, bats, and spiderwebs. We put pumpkins, spiders, bats, and lanterns in the living and dining rooms. We're almost ready to receive the young neighbors begging for treats, and we've got enough chocolates and Skittles to upset the hardiest stomachs. More and more the little ones are accompanied by costumed adults. Last year we had 86 kids at the door. We're ready for even more.

Happy Halloween.

Denver, 2015

Art Journal

Journal page Missouri Petroglyphs by Phillip Hoyle

Even though I write almost every day and almost always jot down something about art (an idea, a reflection upon seeing an art display, even some kind of analysis or quote related to a book I'm reading), I have a difficult time getting to my art journals to write anything. Some months ago I wrote about an art journal that focuses on images, ideas, experiences, and other matters related to Colorado petroglyphs. Beginning that art journal was meant to keep me working in small art forms and keeping a written record of my feelings and work as well. I've painted petroglyphs as it were a dozen years. I still mess with those designs. I affirm that it's better to keep working them as compared with writing about them. 

Art Journal page by Phillip Hoyle

I started a second art journal about petroglyphs in Missouri. I've been even more neglegent in relation to keeping it up to date. Oh well. I have many plans. Always have! Many, many more than I can ever imagine fulfilling. I'm showing just a few things from the Missouri art journal. My other Missouri art is related to flora, not petroglyphs. 

In the meantime I'm fixing more Artist Trading Cards to trade late next week. Hope I get all of these things done.

Denver, 2015

Halloween Art

Spider ATC's by Phillip Hoyle

I have acquired quite a large collection of Artist Trading Cards, the result of several years of trading these baseball trading card-size pieces of art with other artists. As a result I’ve had to increase shelf space to accommodate the growing number of ring binders in which I store them. Still, by comparison with two other collectors who have over 22,000 cards, I’m only a beginner.

In the collection I have many cards related to Halloween and Day of the Dead because these topics are always the October themes of the two trades I attend. Thus I have collected cards of glowing jack o’ lanterns, witches in pointed hats, flying bats, black cats, spider webs, and so much more. There are skeletons wearing party clothes, flying ghosts, ghastly ghouls, walking dead, on and on—designs I don’t particularly groove on yet ones that have become increasingly popular in American life and entertainment. 

Eclipse ATCs by Phillip Hoyle

On Saturday I took several sheets of gloomy ATCs to a trade at CORE New Art Space in the Santa Fe Street Arts District. My themes were spiders, the moon on a dark night (actually the lunar eclipse a couple of weeks ago), and the word BOO. I had other new cards as well, ones I prepared in case some folk should not be so deeply into fright. While I don’t find the topics exciting, I did look forward to the creativity of the Halloween enthusiasts. The October trades generally bring out larger participation!

Even though we did not have anything like a record-breaking attendance, I did take home about thirty cards--really nice ones: clever, arty, skillfully made, funny, weird, and always creative. Check on line searching for Artist Trading Cards, Denver to see more cards and, if you like, get a mild artistic scare.

Boo ATCs by Phillip Hoyle

Denver, 2015

Springtime in My Studio

Missouri Springtime by Phillip Hoyle,  5 x 7 1/2"

Springtime has come before fall has fallen in mixed media art pieces of spring flowers. To create these I have been working from drawings I made in Mid-Missouri in May this year. I left the sketches alone for several months in the hope that I could do something not exactly like the real flowers, somehow change them into lines and colors, dots and scribbles that my son Michael would still be able to identify as the flowers I drew sitting in his prairie, garden, and pastures.

With fall just underway, I am pleased to begin showing these works. I'll let them surround me during the winter with their promise of warmth to keep me comfortable when the snow flies. Well, it's a nice sentiment!

The piece above was started as a print on a GELLI pad made with Golden OPEN acrylics. I added lines, dots, and a few paintbrush strokes. I'm already starting to think of spring even though the sun is shining brightly and warmly here each day. 

Denver 2015