Halloween Artist Trading Cards

Artist Trading Cards mixing Halloween and Day of the Dead images
mixed media Phillip Hoyle, 2017

Here we go again, making preparations for two Halloween and Day of the Dead ATC swap meets. I'm trying to stay ahead of the game since both have the same theme. That demands more cards, but I anticipate the high level of participation and excitement. In these two Denver groups these themes seem to be the most enthusiastically awaited. I know some people have been working for weeks!

ATCs in mixed media. Phillip Hoyle, 2017

I too have been working. I copied the lining to some old shorts I was giving away, ones with Day of the Dead lining, then made generations of copies on printing paper. Then I made a sheet of spider web drawings and copied it over the first copies. After mounting and cutting them into ATC size (2.5x3.5") I used ink to draw an assortment of spiders from the Halloween eerie tradition. 
I even drew several spiders from the backyard. Enjoy.

More Fetish Artist Trading Cards

ATCs of Badger and Bison, Phillip Hoyle 2017

Last week I went to the ATC workshop ready to trade only to find I had gone one week too early! I chalk it up to old age and too compressed a schedule. You'd think a retired person would do better meeting a schedule. I say that because I don't have nearly the schedule I sustained for many years. Still I write, do my artwork, and socialize. I attend both writing and art workshops and classes. Life is full. I like it that way. 

Bird ATC, Phillip Hoyle 2017

I like animals in general although I am less excited these days by squirrels that are making it necessary for me to keep cleaning off the patio as they harvest sweet locust pods. They're as messy as my grandkids, dropping all the leftovers on the patio. I'd put out a trash bin but it wouldn't solve a thing. They don't look where they drop and sometimes they drop them right on me as I sweep. See, life in retirement still has its challenges. Hope you have an art filled week and meet some interesting people.

Fetish Artist Trading Cards

Artist Trading Cards, Buffalo and Bear, Phillip Hoyle 2017

I'm getting ready for an ATC swap and workshop coming up next week. The theme ought to provide some beauties and, perhaps, some laughs. That will be up to the imaginations of the artists. There is a lot of imagination in the groups I trade with. 

I've long admired the cultures and artwork of Native Americans. I get to look at the work, both traditional and modern, of such artists at the Denver Art Museum, the first American art museum to show these works as art. My work with such designs is a mark of my appreciation. 

Rabbit Fetish, Phillip Hoyle 2017

All three of these ATCs are inspired by fetishes by Native Americans. They are done here on water color paper grounds, collage, handmade papers, ink, feathers, and rafia.

Tobacco Artist Trading Cards

Tobacco Juice Artist Trading Cards, Phillip Hoyle 2017

The swap meet at CORE New Art Space on Saturday was especially fine. One artist who we used to see often returned, a new artist came with a handful of cards, and another artist stopped by to look over just what happens. The overall work seemed especially creative. I took some rather silly looking grasshoppers having recalled that when as boys we’d catch them, they’d leave a brown stain on our hands that we called tobacco juice. That’s what I named my cards.

Tobacco Juice ATCs by Phillip Hoyle 2017

They went quickly and were replaced by beauties from other artists. It’s a social with art not refreshments, but to an artist what could be finer? These tiny pieces of art inspire new pieces, techniques, and endless cards to trade. The trade takes place on the second Saturday of the month. Come with 3.5 x 2.5” cards. Check out the website on Facebook. 

Tobacco Juice ATCs by Phillip Hoyle 2017
Grounds for these cards were old acrylic washes and collages.
Drawings in graphite, black ink, and gell pens.

ATC Phillip Hoyle 2017

  I’m still playing around with the mixed media cards I wrote about and showed last week. I was so into the project I kept making more. Finally I have stopped on those and am turning my focus to our next topic. But I’m posting a few more of the Australian inspired theme. I hope you enjoy them.

ATC Phillip Hoyle 2017

A favorite ATC Phillilp Hoyle 2017

ATC Phillip Hoyle 2017

ATC Phillip Hoyle 2017

I'm not quite sure what happened with the spacing of these cards. At least you can see the designs. Why not try your own cards? Find another artist or crafter to trade them with. 

Birds Art New Year

ATCs by Phillip Hoyle, 2017 Mixed media

I've been away for a month but am back at work now to post my  192nd blog with artwork. Again I have made Artist Trading Cards ready to trade next week. Birds was the selected topic and so I recalled seeing migrating geese and other birds while traveling by car across Missouri and Kansas on my way back to Colorado. the unusual part of it was we were seeing them in flight on the last day of December. That's late, a testimony to a very mild fall or birds that had lost their calendars. 

Use your imagination. I tried using mine. And Happy New Year 2017.

Birds in migration across the plains
ATCs by Phillip Hoyle 2017

Printing Frenzy

Print by Phillip Hoyle 2016

Finally I'm back to printing and mixed media with a fall theme. I picked up and pressed elm leaves, cotton wood leaves, grape leaves, and several kinds of maple leaves. I've been printing them and enhancing the prints with Prisma color pencils. I'm exploiting the over abundance of leaves and the use of a couple of Gelli plates using Golden OPEN acyrlics.

Following the instruction from my art friend Sue, I'm working like a mad man, printing, layering, printing on top of prints, having a ball of it in celebration of the methods and the season of falling leaves. I have picked up large and small leaves, sticks, grasses, and hope to keep up myenergy until I use up too much paint and paper. Of course that will only send me to the shelves to find more paper, old envelopes, stray scraps, on and on. 

Leaf Prints by Phillip Hoyle 2016

I do wish I had a better camera and scanner but you get the idea. This week I also started printing on maps and other paintings and prints. Who knows where this will lead me. I'm having fun. That always seems the best motivation for doing art, at least for me. 

Hope you are engaged with some process and finding enjoyment with the multi-colored autumn. Sadly, it looks like the season is about to end even though the calendar promises another month! By then we'll be decorated and I may be influenced by holiday designs and colors! 

December 2016

WHEELS Artist Trading Cards

Wheels ATCs Phillip Hoyle, 2016

For years I enjoyed having a car. Now for years I’ve enjoyed NOT having a car. Last weekend’s ATC trade featured the theme wheels. That’s just right for me, a change from upkeep and expense to a simple celebration of designs. I tore and cut varied wheel figures out of 1950s and 60s LIFE Magazines and created eighteen tiny ATCs—a mix of color (black, white, and red), of techniques (monoprints, collage, and drawing), of materials (printed images, acrylic paint, ink, rice paper, mat board grounds, and glue), and of artistic ideas (contrast, layering, abstraction, design, etc.).

I felt quite pleased with my cards and gleefully traded them with a dozen other folk. The conversations sparkled, a surprisingly intense sun warmed the scene, and artistic discussions made for an especially creative time together on a Saturday morning.

Denver, 2016

Wheels ATC 2016

Quoth the Raven

Raven ATCs, Phillip Hoyle 2016

Finally Halloween has arrived! I've been stuck on those images for weeks and will enjoy moving on. But I wanted you to see a few raven cards. I think they actually look more interesting and even a bit ominous in hand than in these scans, but that's the way things go. 

I took 29 Halloween cards to last Thursday's trade. As usual the Halloween theme prompts artists to create many bizarre things. Mine usually look a bit tame. Guess it's all in the imagination, but I took plenty of creepy spiders and several of these large black birds. And I came home with funny and frightening images for which I traded. 

Halloween ATC's, Phillip Hoyle 2016

Tonight I am preparing to hand out lots of candy. Last year we had over ninety begging 'Trick or Treaters' come to the door. We're expecting a big group this year since the weather is so mild. 

Denver, 2016

Art Intentions

Getting Ready! 

For several weeks I've felt like I am caught in an artistic slump. At such times I think about old arguments contrasting artistic process with artistic output. I believe the origins of the discussion is really educational theory, and it is a good way to look at my situation. 

For me, artistic process includes any number of activities. The only thing that has slowed down is my work in the visual arts. When this happens I recall years ago when I was making collages from magazine pieces and was always suspicious of my color selections, I'd lay out the pieces I was planning to use and look at them for several days or even weeks. I wanted to give my eye time to really see the interactions of the colors before I committed myself to glue. I'm sure I just couldn't get the gumption gathered to engage in the sometimes tedious act of gluing. BUT I'm not making excuses, simply describing.

My current stalled project includes lino block printing on a variety of prepared papers. I've messed with it over several months and finally selected some colors, maps, brushes, inks, on and on. I'm not quite sure my block cut is finished. Hopefully I'll have some finished piece to show next week. I remain hopeful and while my mind keeps at solving visual projects, I keep writing stories. And telling them.

Denver, 2016

Art Prints of Old Figures

Small prints, Phillip Hoyle 2016

You may remember these figures from past posts on this blog. I’ve used them several times. The other day I had printing fever and started grabbing more and more partly used or long rejected papers to print on. They worked! In one afternoon I made over twenty successful prints. I don’t always have enough presence of mind or stamina to do so, but I had set things up ahead of time and had set out papers for a set of Artist Trading Cards. 

Small prints, Phillip Hoyle 2016

I printed the small prints shown here while I was in my frenzy. These old designs of Native North American petroglyphs and the ancient Chinese yin and yang magical symbol brought me the deepest joy. The figures are small but the impact seemed large to me. Hope you enjoy them too.

Denver, 2016

Wildflower Art

Wild Beauties by Phillip Hoyle 2016
Mixed media with acrylic monoprint, ink,
color pencil, and acrylic painting. 

My fascination with wildflowers continues alongside my interest in art printing, drawing, color explorations, and mixed media. This week I completed a painting, even to the point of cutting mats and framing it in an old frame. (Somehow framing seems like the final act for me.) The piece portrays some California wildflowers, Colomia Grandiflora, the latest of my interests! I haven’t seen them in person, but I may need to take a trip to California to see their grand variety of wildflowers. No plans have been set. I’m pretty sure I’ll need to do more drawings in Colorado, Kansas, and Missouri before I make that trek.

Anyway I decided to put these beauties on a monoprint I made from my late tape-prints passion. I’m pleased especially with my endurance. My transfer of the design was difficult to see given the texture of the paint of the monoprint, but I persisted until I could see it and filled in the stems and some of the leaves to lead the way. Hope you enjoy this picture that measures 10.5 x 7.25”. I mounted it on a medium blue mat, cut a second mat of bright white, and put it in a simple modern looking dark oak frame.

Denver 2016

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

Cactus Print Finale

Claret Cup Cacti Monoprint by Phillip Hoyle 2015

Finally I got back to the monoprint I've been looking at for several weeks, maybe quite a few weeks. I'm happy that I did after looking at many pictures of the plant. Some of the buds opened into flowers, others are waiting their turn. At least that's how I imagine it. 

Oh, the collage of monoprints I titled Bear Clan did make it into the WOW show at CORE New Art Space and is hanging there for another week. You can see it if you get there soon. The gallery is open Thursday through Sunday. In case you can't make it there I'll give you a glance at one little part of the show. 

Top left framed work 'Bear Clan' by Phillip Hoyle