It’s never too early for Halloween I always say!

I’m hosting a new Artist Trading Card swap over at ATCsforAll.com called “Pumpkins and Skulls – A Dark Halloween Swap.”

Here are a couple of samples that I drew in color pencil, ink and a little watercolor. I chose the theme to get people to create spookier cards instead of cutsie cartoony cards. I’m into the spookier side of Halloween! The card on the left has silver watercolor on the wall. It is somewhat reflective in person and tured out so nice, I think I’ll use it on more cards.

The due date for cards to be sent in is October 5th. Which leaves plenty of time for mailing the trades back (especially internationally) to receive them in time to display for Halloween!

I joined another Halloween Swap…this one with a theme of “Happy” Halloween…

Here are the color pencil cards I’ll be mailing in for that:

I’ve started a new theme. I was drawing lots of fruit and veggies for a while, now I’m into interiors and exteriors. As with a lot of art, it came by accident. I was waiting in the parking lot outside the office of some apartments my mom was interesting in checking out. I was early and it was raining so I stayed in the car. I pulled out my tin box of pens and blank ATCs and passed the time drawing. The first drawing with the iron fencing was what I drew – behind the fence were buildings, so instead I drew my 3 Italian Cypress on a hill –  they seem to show up in many of my drawings.

Mom called wondering where I was, turns out I was in the wrong complex. But the landscaping inspired me  on a spree of drawing interiors and exteriors with ink and watercolor. The exteriors are drawn from real life, the interiors are mostly all in my mind.

Ripple Sketches – “a small sketch, a small donation…together we can create a ripple in the oil soaked waters of the Gulf.”

Kelly Light  – a talented young illustrator from New York came up with a brilliant idea to raise awareness and raise donations to benefit  The Institute for Marine Mammal Studies and The International Bird Rescue Research Center. Artists donate original art (mostly ATC size), email Kelly an image and she posts it on the blog created especially for this. Viewers donate $10 to one of the 2 chairities, email Kelly confirmation, then an artist will mail them an art card signed and a thank you note on the back. As of this writing, over $5000 has been raised! And the really exciting thing about this is that if you go to the very first post “Be the change you want to see in the world“, you can read her frustration with the oil spill and read about her new idea and how she had raised $100 so far.

19 days later it’s up to over $5000.

That first post is cool on so many levels. Just take a step in the right direction and see where it will lead you. Bravo Kelly Light!

Artists from all over the world are participating. When you view the blog, keep scrolling down and clicking on “older posts” in order to see more and more art. Many of the artists are professional and have links to their blog – oooh so inspiring!

Better go get to work on my art card to donate.

The first time I ever heard of and used gouache was in college. We used it in our graphics class for colorizing some project because gouache can be laid down as a solid, opaque, flat color without streaks. (pronounced “ga-wash”)

Gouache painting is centuries old and originally referred to painting oil over a tempera base. Today it is just used alone, as a water media paint. I like it because of the dried finish. Hard to tell from a scan on the computer, but in person the finish is flat and reminds me of my screen printing days - I like the way light hits the surface of the media. To me part of the fun is the challange of it drying fast and the way the colors generally dry a different value than what you see when wet. Darks dry lighter, lights dry darker.

On the IllustratedATCs site, I just joined a 4×4 Cat Lovers Swap – ATC (artist trading card) collectors also collect other sizes, sometimes binding them together. Here are 3 I just finished in gouache and ink that are 4″ x 4″.

Many people don’t realize that the cut out paper art of Henri Matisses later work was not cut out colored paper. I was cut out gouache painted paper. Most are familiar with his Blue Nudes, but my favorite is a simple piece called Lagoon.

Lagoon, Matisse, 1944

I never appreciated his cut paper work until I tried it myself for a Matisse ATC Swap. We had to make our own paper cut out art in the style of Matisse. Here are my pieces: Woman with Shell, Woman on Beach, Garden and Bog Pond. It was more difficult that I thought it would be. I like how they turned out, I tuned into Matisse.

Matisse style cut out ATCs, Julie Howell

I like to think that Henri Matisse would have liked concept of “mail art” and Artist Trading Cards and would have readily traded original ATC art with others.

I find a lot of wing images of some sort in my mirrored cloud photos. Quite a few skull images too and an occasional flower type image. I often find myself chasing down a cloud to shoot – trying to find an opening without buildings or phone lines. When you don’t want phone lines, suddenly that’s all you see.

Today I was chasing down a simple wing type cloud. Here is what it looked like – it’s the one in the lower center. I was going the the grocery store and I knew that their parking lot didn’t have phone lines or trees – so maybe I’d get lucky.

When I got there it was just too small and looked as if it was getting lower and would be covered by a building. I thought “better luck next time” and went into the grocery store. When I came out that cloud surprised me by getting larger and more spread out – just lovely. Here is what I saw when I got out of the store.

Here is the finished photo taken from two different angles. The second with the trees looks as if there is one of those old fashioned key holes in the middle of the wings.

Polychromos 2.5"x3.5" D'Anjou Pear and Tomato

Color pencil is usually my medium of choice. They are very versatile – you can use them very light or layer them for depth of color, or color very dark. They can be blended with colorless blenders (it’s like a clear pencil) or blended with oil, alcohol or thinner. 

Remember the color pencils you had in your school supplies? – not those. 

For many years I have used Prismacolor brand pencils – they are one of the leaders in fine art pencils. They have brilliant permanent pigments, they are lightfast and they are soft. But because they are soft, they break easily. When you spend up to $1.60 a pencil it’s frustrating to sharpen them only to have the lead fall out in your hand because it was cracked inside. Then you sharpen more and more and before you know it, your pencil is half the size. 

Another leader in fine art pencils are the Faber-Castell Polychromos. I’ve often heard of them but never investigated because I was such a fan of Prismacolor. On my ATC forums I have read more and more about them so I decided to give them a try. The great thing about fine art pencils is that you can purchase the multitude of colors individually. Buying them in a set you’ll get a cheaper per-pencil price. Polychromos cost up to $2.50 for individual pencils – but I’ve read they won’t break like the Prismacolors. Many people use both brands together. And I’ve also seen many use Copic Markers with them as well – but fine art markers is another story. 

Faber-Castell Polychromos

I bought a set of 12 to try out. I drew a pear and a tomato. Polychromos are not as soft as Prismacolors and that took some getting used to. But I like how they erase easier and pigment can lift off more readily with a kneaded eraser.  I really liked how many layers I could put on to get a depth of color without a waxy build up. Inking on top was easier because of that as well. I can do a lot with only 12 colors, but that isn’t stopping me from putting more colors on my Amazon wish list! 

I can see how it will never be one or the other brand. They both have different qualities. But for now, I feel like I have a new toy.

I don’t know if I could call this environmental art…since I’m saving construction waste from going into the land fill or creating pollution by getting burned. Nevertheless I’m picking up scrap wood and painting it with acrylics. Here are a couple of my latest on 1x4s – a 16″ long painting and a 26″ long painting.

Cut celery end with blue ink and stamped ATC and paper

I cut the end off of a bunch of celery and it was so pretty I thought I’d make a stamp out of it. I’m not into Scrap-booking, but I do love to look at all the rubber stamps they have in the craft stores. I guess it’s the artist in me that thinks that you spend 5 or 10 dollars (sometimes more!) on a decorative rubber stamp and using it a 2nd and 3rd time, the art is no longer “original.” But they have their place I guess, I have seen some very nice ATCs done with rubber stamps as a design element. So for a creative alternative, look in your produce bin.

I remember making stamps from sliced potatoes when I was a kid. Maybe in Girl Scouts? I can’t remember. But we cut simple designs in a potato and painted it then stamped with it. This is still a great idea for making some very artsy wrapping paper. Very “green” too – stamp on newspaper! The stock pages have a very even tone to them for use as a background.

Here are some ATCs I made out of some stamps and color pencil. 

I’m hosting my very first swap at ATCsForAll.com.

Swapping is the whole point of Artist Trading Cards. On this website you can meet people and trade cards in your gallery or make custom cards one on one. Or people will host a themed swap for 3  or 6 cards. You create  your cards, mail them to the swap host. The host swaps them out with all the other cards and mails you back 3 or 6 different cards. Lots of fun.

I had not thought of becoming a host myself until a friend sent me a link to SockLady.com that makes this incredible mismatched socks. I thought they would be fun to draw. And so the “Sock Swap” was born.  I wasn’t even into socks until I saw this gorgeous colorful pieces of art for your feet.

As the swap host, I drew some samples - realistic to whimsical, for the participants to view. When I drew the white socks getting warmed on the door of the woodburning stove, I realized that there are a lot of memories involved with socks.

Have you ever warmed your feet in front of a camp fire? Did you ever run fast and slide through the room in your stocking feet? I remember mom putting bread bags over our stocking feet then holding them up with a rubber band. Then we would put on our snow boots and our feet stayed dry while we played in the snow. I remember my dad putting socks on my feet when I was little - then he would rub each foot between his hands so my feet would be warm before I put my shoes on.  I remember the first pair of toe socks – they weren’t real comfortable but they were cool to wear with flip-flops. Did you have a favorite pair growing up? My favorite pair is that white pair in the drawing. They’re heavy cotton and baggie, even with a hole in the bottom they are so comfy.

Mismatched socks are in style - but ask any little kid and you’ll see that they’ve been always been in style.

SockLady.com - Solmate Socks is in Vermont. The ultimate in mismatched socks. They have hats and scarves too.

LittleMissMatched.com - Mis-matched socks for sale in sets of 3 socks.

22 x 30 Color pencil

Years ago while living in Costa Rica, my mom and I spent a weekend doing tourist stuff in Panama. A tour guide drove us around on an unusual tour. (But that’s another story). The “tour” visited a little old lady at her house somewhere in the middle of nowhere where there were these huge boulders scattered around her property covered in  carved hieroglyphs. She even pulled out an ancient National Geographic that showed an article of her husband showing them to the archeologists that were studying them. This spritely lady grew her own coffee, picked it, roasted it and ground it all by herself. All in the middle of nowhere, in a beautiful little shack of a home in paradise.

There was a large homemade rocking chair on her narrow patio and I snapped a photo of a slim yellow dog napping. It was such a big chair and it made me wonder at the possibility that he made a daily habit of skillfully climbing on that chair without it rocking too much, circling around and plopping down for a nap in the sun.

Years later I pulled that photo out and wanted to draw it in a large format. I found a wonderful piece of very heavy paper stock with a nice deckle edge that was 22″ x 30″ – here is the finished piece in color pencil. Click the detail image for a closeup view.