Christmas Spirit Artist Trading Cards

Holly and Ivy Design for Christmas Cards
Phillip Hoyle 2017

As soon as Halloween was done I started to work on--the thinking part of artwork--a Christmas design I could use on a card. I decided I'd again do a Holly and Ivy design after the old song but one that would contrast with another one I'd done years ago and contrast with the kind of printing I have done the past two years. I returned to relief printing and looked at leaves I have collected and pressed and consulted Google. Eventually drew and decided to cut it on a soft tile.

I needed at least forty cards and decided also to make a few other prints. So around the preparations for Thanksgiving I cut and began to print. I also made quite a few Artist Trading Cards from the design, able to get two cards from each printing. 

Christmas Cards 2017

I'm looking through assorted frames for me other prints on contrasting backgrounds. 

Print on previously prepared bubble print
Phillip Hoyle, 2017

Merry art making for a merry Christmas.

Christmas Cards Galore

Christmas Cards printed on Gel plate with stincils. Golden Open paint.
Monoprints by Phillip Hoyle 2016

I am so pleased to tell you I got fifty cards done. Then I counted how many I needed and found I could have stopped at thirty or forty! Oh well, I went at it with enthusiasm and kept experimenting with my techniques. 

Each of the cards is different from the others. And they come in two basic ideas. Those above are prints made directly onto the card stock. They have a very modern look. I hope the folk who get them will appreciate what they get!

The other basic design was to print on pages from an old German Lutheran Hymnbook. I used the same gel plate and stincils. I glued the prints onto the card stock. 

Cards with hymn page prints made on gel plates and glued on cards.
Monoprints by Phillip Hoyle, 2016

Then the other jobs: writing the greeting for inside, printing it, gluing the pages into the cards, signing each card, updating the address list, writing the return address on each envelope, and then going through the list hoping to get each address correct and legible. I am so happy to be almost done with the process. 

I made more Artist Trading Cards using the same stincils and suspect you will find some here next Monday. 

Happy Holidays.

Denver, 2016

Christmas Art

Prints made on gel plate on Advent pages from old hymnal
Phillip  Hoyle 2016

Every year I wonder just what artistic things will happen to welcome Christmas. I start imagining, sketching, and gathering possible materials for cards, larger pieces of art, Artist Trading Cards, and other pieces on related themes. So far this year I've made prints on card stock, old pages from a 19th Century German hymnal, monoprints, stincils, collages, and the like for a Christmas card. I've printed on many kinds of paper to see just what will work. I'm already gluing pieces together and writing down some ideas for a general greeting. And, of course, I feel like I am running out of time. 

Monoprint using stincil on gel plate.
Print on envelope.
Phillip Hoyle 2016

But I'm having fun and will begin a new Art Journal featuring holy people. I haven't limited my idea yet and so have no sure aim at ancient or contemporary, a single religious tradition or something eucmenical, people or symbols. But I remind myself that journals do not need to be overly planned. they need to respond to the turns of a day or a week. Journals reflect a journey. They log progress and regress. They express just what is happening at the time. 

Print on freezer paper
Phillip Hoyle 2016

I hope to present you with great variety in the coming weeks. Again, thanks for your responses. The old year flees, the new year approaches. Celebrate both with art and love.

Denver, 2016

Parades of Lights

Star on Christmas Card monoprints
Phillip Hoyle, 2015

Just over a week ago I watched the Denver Parade of Lights. So today I’m wondering about art and the Parade. My first experience of such a parade was in Tulsa, OK when I was singing on a float with a group of carolers. I’m not sure it was so much art as it was a friendship obligation. Still the event was festive. I don’t know what the overall artistic and affective result of the float was. I was along simply to sing loudly—the great out-of-doors required it!

This year was my first time to attend the Denver Parade. I was there with a group of friends and enjoyed the overall experience that included a brief tour of the Brown Palace atrium with a jazz trio entertaining, children singing along with Jingle Bells and the like, and the children dancing with one another and parents. Our parade evening was off to a cute and festive start. Outdoors we saw the parade’s approach announced by safety lights spinning from golf carts. I wondered if elves could be driving them. Whoever they were, they were clad with reflective jackets. The marching bands were lighted up in special adaptations to their regular outfits—some very cleverly. I realized the invention of portable battery packs and low-watt bulbs made their glittering, moving display magical. Then there was a group of low riders with blue undercarriage lights and the car bodies each covered with as many tiny lights as were added to the huge chandelier in the Brown’s main lobby. These cars came bouncing down the street. Their presence was the most visually stunning effect of the parade.

We heard several bands play beautifully and artistically accompanied by displays of pompoms and flags and huge snowflakes. My favorite band had the least glamorous uniforms but the most enthusiastic delivery of an enthusiastic musical arrangement. I turned to an old band member, a trumpeter, in our group and exclaimed, “They’re the best band with the best arrangement.” He concurred. The other best band was a group of children playing Kazoos. They were on a wonderfully inventive float with moving parts displaying a rising-up-and-down clock tower and followed by a huge balloon of a red-wrapped holiday package adorned with glittery gold ribbon and bow. The old band guy exclaimed, “I love the Kazoo band.” I concurred.

There were more delights and I slipped into critical mode to figure out how some of these displays were better than others, an artistic decision weighing many visual factors along with the affective result among their viewers, an audience that was much more affected than critical. And there I was among them being carried into the past of memories and a present wonderland of sights and sounds. I was moved by the moving displays that combined inventiveness, engineering, precision, stamina, and so many other factors beyond design considerations. There are many things to think about in a work of art!

Denver, 2015

Star monoprint, Phillip Hoyle 2015

Christmas Stars

Star. Monoprint card by Phillip Hoyle
I titled all fifty cards the same.

I had a preacher friend who dreaded the religious holidays, especially Christmas and Easter, “What can you say that hasn’t already been said over and over again?” he whined with true exasperation. “I’m so tired of it.” I wondered if he wanted to be stellar, but even that would be traditional.

I am not so dramatic as my friend but still have to face a similar dilemma annually for my Christmas card. I don’t hope to be original, but I do hope to create something that is different for me, some experimental technique or design even when using centuries-old symbols that more recently have been overused by Madison Avenue to sell holiday presents.

This year I’m using a roller, a stencil, a stamp, and some pencils. I cut the stencil and the stamp myself and employed a printing process my artist friend Sue taught me during the past year. (I suppose this is the way I keep myself entertained in the studio.) I chose odd combinations of colors to create strange looking stars, perhaps ones that could gain the attention of modern-day magi and lead them through a cultural desert find a most holy and unexpected gift.

The ones shown here I am keeping in my collection so don’t be disappointed when you don’t receive one of them. But to summarize my card project; I made fifty monoprints with stamp and Prismacolor enhancements. Well, something like that.

Happy holidays!

Denver, 2015

These cards I'm keeping for my own collection. The process was great fun.

Pushing the Season

A few weeks ago when the media were trying to make engaging news of the annual laying out of Christmas retail products for sale —an topic that picks up some olden time sentiment but fails actually to be news—I was reminded of days years and years ago when in August Lucille M., one of our great volunteers, told me we needed to look at the Christmas decorations in the large downtown church where I worked. It was time, she told me, to put in our order for fresh greens that we’d hang on the first Sunday of Advent. To me that time was a long way off, but to her orders needed to be placed immediately if we were to get what we wanted. So all these years later when the media was working up people’s feelings about a non-issue, I realized I, too, was still directly involved. 

Presenting goods for public consumption is only a marketing concern and such concerns seem always to be in the American consciousness. I had to quit moaning because as an artist I have a challenge before me. The reminder from the retailers always helps me since I print my own holiday greeting cards. It's time for me think about that task and get to designing what I am going to do! Luckily I am a long way from being surrounded by endless tunes of Santa Clause, reindeer, angels, and the baby Jesus. I realized I’d need to figure out what to do this year because I might need the cards early if I again shared a booth with my friend Sue in a holiday crafts fair. Those events start weeks before Thanksgiving!

To the studio! I have to manufacture a Christmas mood in order to get going. I considered beginning with spiked eggnog, but I don’t even like eggnog. Would I be able to tolerate Christmas music? No. So I started leafing through a huge volume of Gothic art. I looked and looked and even began sketching, but didn’t get caught up in anything. I thought I’d go another direction, American Craftsman traditions since I live in a neighborhood of Denver bungalows, many of which are definitely craftsman in design and appointments. I decided to do something with long needle pine branches and began looking at the trees, their needles and cones, and the designs I might be able to emulate. That turned out a worthy topic, one that I have yet to figure out!

I got out my printing supplies and messed around with some other projects using those methods, something to get me into the mood. I cut a couple of lino blocks and kept drawing pines. So this weekend, before this blog shows up, I have to meet the challenge. 

Here's what happened in picture form.

 I started drawing after looking at trees, photos of trees, craftsman examples of pine cones and long pine needles. I messed and messed and finally got a design I hoped I'd be able to actually carve on a lino block.

I traced the design onto tracing paper, then turned it over and taped it to the block. By again drawing it, the original pencil transferred to the block leaving a backwards copy of the design. Just what I wanted.

I carved the easiest parts first. I was afraid of the needles since they'd need to be more delicate. I'm not very delicate myself, and I sure didn't want to have to start over again!

I made a proof print, then compared the original drawing and it to find out where I needed to go back in and clean up or re-cut some details on my block.

Finally I was fairly pleased with the results. Now I'll take a variety of papers and a stack of white card blanks and another of brown card blanks and get to work! Wish me well, you know, good luck with the different colors of ink, the clean up, and eventually finding the current addresses of my friends and relations I want to send cards to this year.

And if you try something artsy this Christmas, I likewise wish you all the best. Oh that's so far away.

If you are putting off your holiday planning, I urge you to get to the planning and work. You can still hurriedly address and mail your cards at the last minute and get that holiday rush. I worry that if I don’t get this underway immediately, I’ll never get to it until next year or even the one after that! Merry Christmas!

Denver, 2014