What Happened to September

"All good things must come to an end" it is said and that is certainly true for my one month art sabbatical.  This morning as I try to chase away the cobwebs of exhaustion with my favorite morning McDonalds coffee, I reflect on the month.  Even amid the large piles of displaced items that were hurriedly removed from the camper in the 100+ heat and deposited in piles around the house that today require my attention, I am excited to get back into my own studio."

I wrote that opening paragraph to this blog post almost a month ago....I am ashamed to say that 9/1/17 was my last post and that is just not acceptable.  I know this but somehow the days and weeks have flown by and I have to get myself back on the BLOGGER TRACK!

I have such a renewed urgency to create more art that not only grabs the attention of the viewer but art that makes people smile.  I have both a solo show coming up in March 2018 and an outdoor festival at the end of this month that both need my attention.  I will be posting much more about that as the time draws closer.

I don't do many outdoor shows, but I purchased a tent a couple years back and have yet to even use it.  Well on September 30th that will change as I am one of the art vendors for the Chalk Festival at Skye Canyon up on Mt. Charleston.  I have to make sure I have plenty of prints on hand as well as magnets and cards.  It should be a lot of fun and hopefully I will sell some art and make some new art friends.




For this blog post this morning, I really just wanted to recap for you a few of my newest art creations that came to life the past few weeks.  First, I wanted to show you my granddaughter birthday art I created.  I only have 2 granddaughters out of 9 grandchildren and they both of September birthdays that are only separated by 2 years and 1 day.  They both also are the tiny owners of some ginormous dogs- one has two very large intimidating dobermans and the other has a giant goofy, gangling great Dane that is just a giant clumsy mess.  This theme has been one for several years that has been running in my head as a fun children's story but that is a goal for another day.




Using a mixture of original art and digital downloads, I created this fun and colorful art to give to them for their birthdays.  I decided to try the printing quality of RedBubble and am very happy with the small tote bags I ordered for them.  The colors are bright and the bags are well constructed.  The image is printed on both sides and  I thought it would be so much fun for them to have their image on a tote bag.  THEY DID!



Here is the only picture I took of the two tote bags.  I have them laying on the coffee table with a large pile of stickers I had just finished cutting out.  As soon as I see that these stickers are going to generate sales enough to justify it, I am going to be investing in a cutting machine.



I've added a number of new stickers to my Etsy Shop that you might just want to check out.Julie Townsend Studio Etsy Shop



I am also very excited to present my country coasters....I've been working on perfecting a method of transferring my art onto a stone travertine 4 x 4.  They are super cute and I already have several orders to process from Facebook.  These will also be listed on my Etsy Shop eventually as I refine the process and make certain that the sealer I am using holds up as claimed.  Who knew that Modge Podge made so many varieties.  These are sealed with the dishwasher safe formula but it takes 28 days to fully cure according to the instructions on the bottle.  I don't think I would run them through the dishwasher but you do want them to stand up to wet condensation from melting ice and the heat generated from hot beverages.

Sweet Tooth and a Cute Pig

A few days ago I pulled out my paints and brought them into the tiny camper along with the extra cowbells, wooden spoons and lots of good intentions.  I managed to paint 2 cowbells and now my paints are shoved under the table.  Oh, I want to paint, but the truth is, I'm just having too much fun combining my art with elements of graphic designs.  So let me show you what I did the other day..

Sometime in 2016, I drew a sketch of my grandson with all this curly golden locks.  He loves candy sprinkles and so I had him floating with only the upper portion of his face showing above the colorful avalanche of sweetness.  I also wrote a poem to go with the illustration called "Ode to Sprinkles"
JulieTownsendStudio.com:  Poetry and Other Silly Things

So just for fun, I revisited that original sketch and added some digital enhancements.  I added coloring and then went to PNGTree.com and downloaded a couple of image files of candy and donuts and placed them around the sketch.  I'm calling this funny composition "Sweet Tooth" and while I might still do some tweaking on it, I was anxious to show it to you.

Seeing how cute this turned out I decided to create a couple more images using more grandsons (I have plenty to choose from) and here is what I came up with.

I feel I should also share with you this adorable pig that I created this week that I didn't share with you. I made it to go long with my cow and rooster image I drawn a few days earlier.  I'm having fun creating simple drawings of these farm animals and then finishing them up in Photoshop.  Just like the coloring page I created the other day, these images just start out as simple line drawings in my sketchbook.  I'm sure when I finally return home to my studio they will end up on magnets and greeting cards along with merchandise.