Predator Artist Trading Cards

Birds of Prey after a Wyoming group of Petroglyphs
Prints by Phillip Hoyle 2017

Just as I was feeling relief at ending the creepy images of Halloween, I saw our next theme was Predators. The images continue! I knew I needed to get away from aggressive spiders so made a list of animals that are categorized as predators. I narrowed the list to North American animals and decided to cut blocks and print more Native American inspired petroglyphs. Somehow the petroglyph seems more friendly to me than the tooth and claw images of grizzlies catching salmon or lions running down and breaking the necks of their prey.

More Predator ATCs for the trade. Phillip Hoyle, 2017

I printed on commercial papers that I then mounted on card stock. Many Thai papers take the prints easily. I used soft, easy-to-carve blocks available at art and craft supply outlets. The emphasis is on design, its easy transfer, the careful cutting, and the colors of the ground that will be the color of the carved figure. I like that the paint (I used Golden OPEN) application is like the weathering of the rocks like most of the petroglyphs on sandstone in Western American deserts. 

Enjoy these benign predator images that probably symbolized personal power or valor in hunting societies. Maybe there is a bear in you. 

Leaf Prints

Leaf print on monoprint by Phillip Hoyle 2017

Between writing paragraphs and stories I am still finding my way to my basement studio to experiment with printing. I use leaves I pressed last autumn and finally have made quite a few prints. But for me the approach is still experimental and I'm contented with the artistic play. Comparing my prints with those showing up in books in the subject, I am learning, getting the feel of it. I realize I may ruin quite a few leaves before I am satisfied with the basic technique! But that medium is very costly to the leaves. 

Oak leaves last longer for experimenting. So do cottonwood leaves. But the elm leaves are less hardy. The oak leaf on the print shown above is ten inches in length and, to my way of thinking, a beautiful specimen. The largest of the elm leaves below is eight inches long! I found it in our neighbor's yard, the product of a huge American elm tree. I'm enjoying the leaves and the process.

Elm leaf prints on paper 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

Printing from Tapes

Tape and acrylic paint by Phillip Hoyle 2016

An experiment with making prints off of tape left me with an interesting piece of art. I adhered masking tape, artists tape, electrician tape, Scotch tape and a few other tapes to a couple of pieces of board in order to make some Artist Trading Cards. I put the paint directly from the tubes onto the tape-covered board and rolled away with my brayer. By the time I cleaned it all up, I had printed quite a few cards--some to make ATCs, others to serve as backgrounds for more ATCs, some I don't quite know what to do with. AND I have from one of my tape plates this nice horizontal piece of art measuring 4" x 11". The rolled-on acrylic paints made interesting fluid designs to contrast with the rigid marks of the tapes themselves. 

Sometimes an artist just lucks out. I guess I'll keep this one for myself. May you have good luck in your artistic efforts.

Denver, 2016 

Art Journal with No Words

Art Journal by Phillip Hoyle, 2016. A mixed media experiment and
a personal experiment to see if I can produce a book in which I write
no words. So far, so good!

I am pleased that the project to produce an art journal this year is underway. I've made good progress both in making pages and in coming to understand what I am doing. So without words I arrange my pages paying some attention to what appears next to each other. Someone may wonder just how I made my decisions. I'm not sure I can even explain.

Art Journal by Phillip Hoyle 2016. Of course there are words on the old
map I've used, but they're very hard to read and only indicate the part
of the world from which the petroglyph designs have come.

I am making some personal references through the use of a few photographs, for example including one of a snapshot I took when I was a young teen at a powwow, another one of a family member many years ago.


I hope you as a reader of this blog will get as much kick out of my efforts as I am in doing the project.

Art Journal by Phillip Hoyle 2016. I am having a great time with mixed media
interpretations using prints, monoprints, stamps, and a variety of pens. Each
page measures 5x8". 

Found Objects

Leaf Print ATCs by Phillip Hoyle
Each card 2 1/2" x 3 1/2"

I found some objects, namely leaves and some paper I had saved for the occasion of making Artist Trading Cards to this theme. The paper I saved when we dismantled the ATC booth at Denver County Fair in August. The table covering had marks from watercolor pens, pencils, blotches of paint, notes people had written for fun (?), an odd assortment of designs, scratches, scrapes, and colors that I knew I should save. Then a month later, this topic was chosen for a theme. 

I printed leaves on the paper, then used a very fine pen to clarify some edges and add a few details that didn't want to print. I did even more by saving the leaves I printed and use them as collage details for more cards. It was an enjoyable project and I learned a lot about the techniques and accidents of plant prints I tried to make the most of my accidents. Besides that, I enjoyed our trade last Thursday evening at Jerry Simpson's studio. 

Denver, 2015

Bear Clan

Bear Clan by Phillip Hoyle
Collage of monoprints

As I have worked with this image of a bear in the past year, I have always seen it as a spirit image and without thinking much assigned it to the male gender in my mind. When my daughter-in-law saw several of the prints, she saw it as a female bear. My art friend Sue saw it as a bear, not assigning any gender label.

So I wonder how others may see it. If you want to tell me, make a comment! It's a little bit difficult, but select the anonymous category. You may have to type in a code from an illustration. I would like to know. Comment below. I hope to learn something.

Oh, I entered the piece into the WOW open art show at CORE gallery. So now I wonder if its a she-bear, a he-bear, or something else AND I wonder if I'll be jury-ed in! Hope so and further hope you have a good art week. 

Denver, 2015

County Fair

Some Artist Trading Cards that are going to the
Denver County Fair this weekend.
Mixed media ATCs by Phillip Hoyle

I recall going to the Clay County Fair at the end of the summer in Clay Center, KS a place with 4H displays, animals from surrounding farms and ranches, food judging, live music, rides to make my stomach feel queezy, (maybe because I had just eaten too much BBQ beef made by the Lions Club), and lots of people wandering the grounds. It also seemed to announce the impending start of school at CCCHS. Some fifty years ago I tramped through the county fairgrounds and buildings looking at homemade pies and home-canned garden produce, ducks and chickens, cows and horses. It was a rather celebrative affair in that little town where I attended high school.

After I left there, I never expected to participate in a county fair again. When many years later I moved to Denver, I went with friends to something similar, the National Western Stock Show. Being there stirred up memories of childhood trips to the American Royal Horse Show in Kansas City. Now there is a Denver County Fair in its fourth or fifth year held in the exhibition hall out at the the National Western Stock Show grounds. 

Anyway I have entered three sheets of Artist Trading Cards: two pages of wildflowers and one page of drums. (I posted some of the drums on this blog.) Also I have a monoprint with a collaged map with a grizzly bear printed on it. I'd show you that, but I never did take a photo of it! Guess you can visit the fair to see it. Look in the Mixed Media section of the Art Gallery. 

I am not only attending, I'm rather involved in the fair this year. On Thursday I'll help set up an Artist Trading Card booth where you can stop by and make cards, on Friday when the fair begins I'll be visiting it with some friends, and on Sunday I'll return to help with the booth, help pack things up, and retrieve my artwork. Lots of activity. Lots of fun.

Hope your summer is full of lots of fun and at least some art.

Denver, 2015

Art Prints Galore

Printed on magazine paper, I played with
aa combination of colors and the use of
a circle of cardboard. Look here next week
to see if I was able to turn this mono-print
into a mixed media bunch of flowers--my goal.

A little over a week ago I spent an afternoon with my artist friend Sue printing in her studio. Both Sue and I print and recently have been working with mono-print techniques. I am a newcomer to the filed; Sue has been at it for quite a few years. She invited me to join her for an exploration of using the relatively new Gel printing plates available from GELLI ARTS. Plates come in several sizes. I had worked with a small one, but that day I was going to explore what I could do on a plate 5 x 7". Works made on these soft plates do not require a press or even a spoon. The artist simply uses a hand. 

Sue really liked this design made with a stencil. She was more moved than
I although I too like it. I'm not quite sure what I will do with this one, but
she suggested I make a work with a group of these pieces showing perhaps
six or nine of the figure in different colors and backgrounds.
The bear is from an old Ute petroglyph in a group of several carvings
along the Gunnison River in western Colorado.

I liked working with the larger plate and used a brayer to spread the paint. I used my hands to transfer the prints, but sometimes I used a baren or another brayer. I used a variety of mark makers as I continued to explore the interactions of colors with one another, of the paints on different kinds of paper, of the effects to be made with stencils and other mark makers. I kept varying my techniques and following suggestions Sue made. And I ended the session with quite a few prints and many more ideas. I plan to make a set of Artist Trading Cards of florals. I'll call them Colorado Wildflowers! Be sure to check next week to see what took place. I believe the work with the bear figure will prove even more challenging. You may have to wait several weeks on that one.

Hope you are having a wonderful artistic summer.

Denver, 2015 

The Printer's Edition

If you squint you can make out the
signature and numbering.
Prints by Phillip Hoyle

I finally did it, completed a goal I didn’t even know I entertained. Sometimes I am modest to a fault. Now I have printed a numbered edition of 12 prints of the trees I showed about three weeks ago. I have gone so far as to sign and number them.

Now it’s on to Artist Trading Cards. Two topics are coming up fast: ‘Orange’ and ‘Words and Letters’. The first reminds me of the orange paint a grandson picked for a group of paintings we were doing together. I thought I hated the color until I started working with it and watching him do likewise. I still don’t often grab for the orange but guess I had better do so soon.

On the other hand, Words and Letters seems perfectly suited to my work. I’m making some tiny weavings with pages from books and newspapers in different languages. I will also make several figures using letters as the structure for the designs. I haven’t quite decided whether to do people, animals, plants, or abstracts. Guess we’ll have to wait until next week to see if I have come up with anything.

In the meantime I am sure to play around with many ideas.

Of course, the greatest accomplishment of my week was to file my income taxes on time. I’m pleased.

April 2015

Stilll Printing

Block print by Phillip Hoyle

For quite a few years I've been printing some artwork. i began by making Christmas cards with simple relief prints of words and designs. Then the designs got more complicated with several punk rock angels. Last season I made a print of pine branches and needles in Craftsman style. The other day I finished my most complicated piece yet, one with aspen trees in winter in Chiaroscuro style.

The piece required two block cuts--one for brown, the other for black. I can't say I'm completely satisfied. About half way through the designing and cutting I realized I'd made a very intricate design, too ambitious for a first try! But I stayed with it. And I did learn a lot in the process. I hope to learn even more from the ideas that came from this project.

Long live art and the making of art!

Denver, 2015

A Flight of Owls

I'm unsure of the traditional way to designate a group of owls. Perhaps they don't have such a designation. Other birds have rather fancy names attached to their groups. But I do know that the many owl Artist Trading Cards I made took flight. I had made twenty seven cards. Now I have none! 

I took three sheets of nine cards each. One sheet had nine drawings. One had nine prints. You may have seen them in last Monday's post. I also had one sheet of nine collages. Now I have none!

Maybe I'm bragging. I certainly am happy that I have twenty-seven new cards from the trade. (Actually quite a few more than that!) I'm happy that I got to see a number of artist friends Saturday at the trade. I'm happy that I got to see a fine installation of art at CORE New Art Space. I'm happy I spent the morning with my artist friend Sue. Oh, she got several cards.

Here are the collages for your inspection. Sorry I cannot trade them with you!

Owl collages with mixed media on paper
Phillip Hoyle

Denver, 2015

The Journal

Although I started my art journal last week, I have made only four entries in it. I suppose because I write my Morning Pages every day, I assumed I might do more than three or four entries a week. But who knows? I didn't write everyday although I have written several times a week in my pages for over seventeen years. Perhaps I will develop my own way to do my art journaling.

I don't really feel disappointed, but I do wonder just what all I will make of art journaling. I am struck at how much easier it is for me to write a sentence than to draw a picture. At this point, with four entries made, I find that what I write does two things: it interprets something about the print I have mounted on the page and it tells stories related to the petroglyph I have made the block print from. For example, I have mentioned an artist I drew with in the valley where I first saw these petroglyphs. I have also mentioned my grandson who saw some of these when he was young and asked me a question about one of the figures I had posted on Facebook. 

The first time I heard about keeping an art journal, the friend who told me had spent weeks making mandalas on a daily basis. She explored her thoughts and feelings through the designs and drawings, through colors and shapes, through abstracts that sought to explore things she barely had words to express. I was impressed and recalled a workshop I attended in which I too made mandalas. Of course, these were assignments for the express purpose of the workshop and did not become a regular practice. Perhaps I will add some mandalas to my art journal. So far I have not.

The second time I discussed an art journal with an artist, I was encouraged to draw, draw, draw. It reminded me of Julia Cameron's write, write, write approach to Morning Pages in her Artists Way book. I draw but not incessantly like my son did in his high school years. I doodle but don't feel prone to do so every day. So I'm wondering, now that I have begun my first art journal, what am I going to do?

What I actually did was to mount two more prints and mess around on the pages! The second one with the big bear became a confetti celebration and a few words. The third one with a deer became an explanation of the petroglyph type, its location, some archaeological information I recalled from reading about it, and my feelings from first seeing it on a huge boulder near my in-laws' farm. 

I'm not quite sure what I think about what I am doing, but I'm sure happy to be doing it. I wonder what I will learn. What new ways will I learn to relate to art? What new ways will I learn to express my feelings? I feel hopeful and mildly excited and mostly feel like I'm on the verge of learning something mighty nice about art and myself.

Denver, 2015

Art Journals

I've shown this paintingbefore.
It's the same figure as in the print
I added to my new journal.
I've used it in several paintings but couldn't
find a picture of the one I wanted to show here.
Oh well.

Last evening I began two art journals related to who-knows-what art experiences to come. One is going to focus on or be inspired by Ute Petroglyphs. I'm using drawings as I make entries but haven't begun to consider whether I'll make daily entries. I'm gluing to the pages small prints of Ute rock carvings; at least I did last night.

Beyond what I have done, I have no clear direction, but I have been encouraged to do this by my artist friend Sue.

Years ago, just as I started writing daily, I was challenged to spend some time keeping a drawing journal--an idea I have never pursued. The suggestion intrigued me, so this Ute journal is my beginning in this new direction.

I made an entry in my "Ute" journal, glued in a small print, and wrote my recollection of drawing the design years and years ago. I also wrote of an interaction with one of my grandsons when I posted a painting of the figure a couple of months ago in Facebook.

That was my start. 

But I mentioned two journals. I made a cover for the second journal, a print of an Osage petroglyph after an 1804 drawing by William Clark, a figure he discovered along the Missouri River. I'm not sure what this journal will be at all although I have many years experience from Mid-Missouri. Who knows? I certainly do not. Still I'm looking forward to what I may learn in days, weeks, months to come as I draw, collage, and make my way through these journals.

Denver, 2015

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

Time to Print

I’ve had a lino-block in my studio for some months, one I made an image for and carved, but all my experiments didn’t work out right. I couldn’t print from it to my satisfaction. Mid-week I decided to do something about it and got out my knives, gouges, other equipment, printing inks, brayers, and medium-size baren. I was going to rework the block and get busy. I wanted to use if for a card to send one of my grandsons for his birthday.

I really liked the design, one inspired by a Ute petroglyph out in western Colorado along the Gunnison River. I’ve seen drawings of the original and photographs but have never encountered it on the cliff wall where it shares space with a couple of other impressive carvings. I looked at it, tried it one more time with a different ink, but still decided it need more strength, the kind that comes from contrast. The original is a work that one anthropologist described as new-style given that the chipping that creates it simply removes the outer layer of weathered rock to create the design. In contrast to what he called old-style, the artist did not make deep gouges into the surface but seemed contented with the color contrast. So I figured it might work better if I were to remove the lino right around the figure itself and finish it with a border. Parts of the figure would interrupt the border. 

I set to work, selecting a medium large gouge and taking care not to let my fingers get in the way of the sharp instrument should it slip. Oh it did slip a few times, but mostly I was safe and am pleased I didn’t end up with bandages like sometimes I’ve done this work. I brushed off the waste into the trash and wiped the block with a damp cloth. Then I gathered a few pieces of paper to make some proofs and see what I had got. I like what I did and used the rest of the ink to print another block I made years ago. What ink was left on the surface where I rolled it out I drew into and lifted another print from that, an abstract I may mess more for a mixed media piece. I try not to waste any product.

And along the way I found I wanted to hang a few small prints at the Colorado Mountain Art Gallery in Georgetown. Guess I’ll have to work quickly since I work up in the hills this Tuesday. 

Denver, 2014