Here We Goat Again

I wonder if this has ever happened to anyone else....I was contacted by phone in March by a lady who was at the gallery looking at my artwork. She asked how much I would charge her to draw her a goat for her grandson who just "Loves goats". I said that I get $95 for an 8 x 10" original matted color pencil sketch. A few days later I got the privilege of meeting this lady because she came to my art reception. While there, she purchased an original bunny sketch "Watching Carrots Grow" for $95 from me. She again confirmed to me she wanted a goat piece for her 10 year old grandson's birthday in May. She wanted my style and left the actual composition completely up to me.

About two weeks later I received an email from her daughter telling me to go a head and start the goat piece. That was the beginning of what I now call "Goat Month" in my studio. As my normal practice, I will do several sketches just to get ready to start a painting and I had my eye on this reference photo that I had downloaded from Pixabay.com of three goats standing up on a barn stall. I could just see in my mind just how great that would look hanging as a new addition to my "I Dare You Not to Smile" collection of art.

Baby Goat on a Stump 

I drew this sweet little goat on a stump using the same illustrated style that I have developed when drawing with my color pencils. I hoped she liked it and so I sent her a picture. She emailed back that she loved it we made arrangements to meet when I was once again on gallery duty in Boulder city. She gave me a check and I handed her over the artwork. All is good, or so I thought.

I've been trying to grow a email list that I can periodically send out a studio newsletter of sorts to inform my follows what I'm doing and my current projects. My May Studio News featured an image and a paragraph or two about goats and my newest painting "The Nanny Squad".

A few days later I mentioned my painting that I had finished called the "Nanny Squad" and talked about how this month had been goat month in my studio.

To my surprise, it was just a few days later when I get a phone call from this same lady. She states that since her grandson was turning 10 she was afraid that the drawing I did for her might just be a bit childish and asked if she could have me paint a small goat painting with maybe just one of the goats in the big painting I had just finished. She also made it clear that she couldn't afford to buy a second piece so her desire was for me to just to exchange it for a new painting.

What would you do? I thought about and felt I was in no way under obligation to exchange the artwork. She was happy with the sketch until she saw my painting of a goat and then had buyers regret.

After some thought, I really had to remember that she already was a repeat collector, a resident of Boulder City and so she may very well purchase something else from in in the future. I agreed to start a new piece for her. I painted this little 11 x 14 white goat.

Today, I just decided that when I contacted her to show her to piece and to tell her I was finished with it that it couldn't hurt to ask for additional compensation. After all, a painting is more complicated and time consuming to do and I have already established a higher price point for paintings over sketches. To my great happiness they agreed to pay me $55 more dollars they said for my hard work. I'm happy, they are happy and hopefully the grandson will be VERY HAPPY TOO!

If you like my artwork, please consider checking out My Julie Townsend Studio Website or Etsy Shop. My prints and cards are reasonably priced and I ship the prints free on my Website inside the US.

The Hummingbirds Just Won't Hold Still

Why should I feel discouraged

Why should the shadows come

Why should my heart feel lonely

And long for heaven and home

When Jesus is my portion

A constant friend is he

His eye is on the sparrow

And I know he watches over me

Practicing in my sketchbook

This powerful verse was written over 100 years ago by Civilla Durfee Martin (1866-1948).  Civilla was born in Nova Scotia and died in Atlanta, Ga. The poem “His Eye is on the Sparrow” was written in 1905 and has become one of the most influential gospel hymns and has been sung.  https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/resources/history-of-hymns-his-eye-is-on-the-sparrow

A Journal page dedicated to sparrows

Last week I was completely obsessed with drawing these tiny little song birds.  I didn't realize how many varieties of sparrows there are in the world and some time online researching trying to just determine what breed is the most common here in the Las Vegas area.  I finally concluded that I think they are Brewer's Sparrows.  They have dark beaks and the males have dark brown heads and throat.




It wasn't just pencils and pen this week that were busy creating feathers but I also decided to grab up my paintbrushes and have some fun with this little acrylic piece a small sparrow on a stump surrounded by black eyed susans and tall grass.  This is on an 8 x 8 gallery wrapped canvas.


All this sparrow drawing and painting helped me prepare for my biggest sparrow challenge of the week.  This 5 x 18 color pencil painting took me longer than I thought it would.  Each day I added another sparrow to my fence and then decided that some tall wildflowers added to the composition.  To get ready for this drawing I spent sometime sketching and painting sparrows.  I even dedicated a page to them in my artistic journal book and took pictures of the color pencil process on one of the birds to share here with you.

"Early Morning Flock Talk"- 5 x 18" original colored pencil painting

Here I have my rough sketch done in 4H pencil so that it is very lightly drawn out.  I used a light tan color and filled in almost the entire bird except for where I felt there were going to be white feathers or very dark areas.  My main concern here is to get rid of as much white paper as I can with the lightest color that is found on the feathers.  Don't worry if you cover up more than you want to because later the mechanical eraser does wonders with pulling off the waxy lead.

This second progress photo shows that I have used my Marvy LePen black to draw in the fine details of his face.  I have also added a darker shade of brown to the face and wings.  I always am amazed at just how much difference there is in a piece of art when you add the eyes.  The eyes are certainly the most important part of a face.





The third picture taken of my work in progress shows that I'm using the black Prismacolor to block in the chest feathers and the area around the eyes and beak.  I've also used this very lightly to add some contrast and shadows in the area of the chest feathers.








Using color pencils is really all about layers and as I work around the bird I just keep adding more and more colors to bring out the feathers and the detail.  I am really hooked on the way that outlining my subject with a black line gives it a more illustrated look.  I love the combination of the fine detail and the illustrated comic look.  I think it makes each element pop in the composition and so for now that is the style that I am going for.  So in this picture you can see I have now outlined the whole bird and the fence post.




On my next progression shot I show you one of my favorite color pencil tools and that is my battery operated Derwent eraser.  This eraser is amazing and I love the effects I can get with it on feathers and areas that I want texture not to mention cleaning up spots where I got a little carried away with my coloring.





With all the erasing you can really produce a lot of debris on your paper and rather than using your hand to brush off the bits of rubber missed with paper and colored wax, you want to use a brush.  I love this Langnickel 2" Large Area Artist brush for that.  The bristles are very soft but think enough that it does a great job cleaning up my paper with out smudging the colors.  I got this particular brush as part of a drawing set I ordered from pencil artist Darrel Tank (5 Pencil method).  I don't think he sells supplies anymore but I'm sure you can find this same brush at Cheap Joes or at Blicks.


As I am coming to the very last of the details, I often grab my white Reminisce gel pen to brighten the highlight of the eye or spots of white where I want the the brightest highlights to be.

In my completed piece that I titled "Early Morning Flock Talk",  this particular sparrow is number 2 in the line of 5 feathered friends.  

Traveling Down Country Roads

I lived the best years of my childhood on a dusty dirt road surrounded by trees, flowers, wildlife and farming.  I love old farm houses, gardens, livestock, barns, porch swings, old mail boxes, barbed wire fences and fence posts covered in morning glories and banks of wild flowers dotting every dirt road and 2 lane highway across this amazing country and they are my inspiration as I approach my senior years. 

When the world feels like crazy is becoming the normal,  I have to only return to my roots to find that this country is still full of good folk that appreciate the freedom to work hard and get their hands dirty, to raise their families and take care of their neighbors. This series of paintings is my tribute to that way of life and looking at them.  My goal with this series is frankly to, if only for a moment, take you back to your childhood and make you smile.

My artist motto, "Telling Stories with My Paintbrush" has never been more relevant in my life.  So I'm stuck on painting farm animals and standing along barbed wire fence posts   Cows are such curious creatures and will often watch you as drive by, especially if all your children are hanging out of the windows yelling, "MOO."  

I just can't help myself and found that I have a strong compulsion to paint these giant creatures with their sweet curious faces and large eyes.  Maybe they are just chewing their cud or engaging in the disgusting habit of licking their nose with their over sized tongues.  No matter what they are doing, cows make great subjects for my stories. Pair that with the consistent theme of blue morning glories and tall green grass you have all the elements of a great composition.  

I have painted 6 large feature works and several smaller pieces for this theme and hopefully all of them tell a story of life "Down Country Roads".  

I hope you enjoyed my little trip down memory lane.  All of these images are available in prints at Fine Art America or as 4 x 6 art magnets on my Etsy Store- Country Magnets or Etsy Store- Cow Magnets

My Art Marketing Tip

If you know me for any time at all you know that I LOVE Facebook and the potential it has to brand you and your art.  I'm no social media expert and I don't try to pretend I understand how it works.  What I do know is that you can have art sales and plenty of them using social media. 

So I wanted to share with you my FREE Facebook Marketing tip- 

Recently, I joined a Facebook group that has over 19,000 members.  The whole focus of this group is country decorating. This group is amazing and I really enjoy seeing all the posts.  Another great thing about this group is that most of my artwork is a perfect fit there and the cherry on top of the whole thing is that you are allowed to sell items on this group page. That's right...I can show a picture of my most recent cowbell creation and sit back and be flooded with comments and likes.  Now in the three weeks I have been part of the group I have only had inquiries about my prices and no sales yet...and that is a giant YET! I also notice that I'm getting friends requests from other members of the group.  

Here are some other examples of my artwork.  I think you can see why a group that is dedicated to Country or Primitive Decorating would be a good fit for my style of painting.  You can check out more work and my poetry too on my website at JulieTownsendStudio.com

I also add my images to make prints, greeting cards and art magnets

Here are my most recent paintings and cowbells done just this week

Getting Up to Paint Morning Glories in the Morning Before the Chickens

This colorful guy has been perched on my easel for WAY TOO LONG!  I had initially started this piece almost a month ago and even had it listed on my inventory sheet to be part of my "Down Country Roads" library art show but ran out of time with all the distractions and obligations that sprung up on me in the past few weeks.

It also didn't help that I really struggled with the background composition.  Oh I had the rooster nailed down right away but everything I tried for the background, sunflowers, tall grass or a mottled paint treatment just didn't seem to make me happy.  I actually painted over it 3 times.  And that isn't easy when you have a giant feathered chicken in the middle of your canvas.  Honestly, I came upon this idea of having a very colorful and almost pop art feeling background just yesterday.  Combine that with my normal style and I think it really makes this guy pop!  I even woke up earlier this morning than I needed to just to start working on those morning glories.  

I guess at this point I need to make one more confession about this painting. I'm sure I am the only artist that makes glaring (no pun intended) mistakes and paints the sun in the wrong location.   I had the background perfect and was so excited in how it was looking when I took my normal position across the room where I can take in the whole painting from a distance when I realized that silly me had painted the sun in front of a much larger row of beautiful purple mountains.  The sun was actually rising between the grass and mountains and I hadn't even thought about how impossible that would be.  For just a brief moment, I considered leaving it and chalking it up to artistic license but mixed up some more pthalo blue and purple and so my mountain range shrunk to half its original size along with the bottom portion of the sun.  Pop art or not, it still needs to make sense.

This past week I had the amazing experience of seeing the whole of my "Down Country Roads" collection on display at the Whitney Library.  Here is a picture of me taken the night of my artist reception standing in the middle of all my focal pieces.  Even with the Pop Art background, this piece stays true to the rest of my collection and really shines with the bright blue morning glories finishing off the foreground.  I can visualize it right now hanging right along side the rest of them.

As my usual practice, I do a sketch in preparation for starting a new painting.  This helps me greatly with understanding the details I will be trying to achieve even before I grab a paint brush.  My sketches are usually in colored pencil and ink and are often available for hanging.  I matte them and hang them right along side of my other artwork.  This particular sketch I called "In All His Morning Glory" and I found it especially helpful when it came to painting all those tail feathers.

IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN SEEING MORE OF MY ARTWORK OR POETRY THEN PLEASE CHECK OUT MY WEBSITE AT Julie Townsend Studio.com

A Stampede of Bovine Beauties

So I'm working like a crazy woman trying to get all my artwork together, framed, matted, printed, inventoried and yes, I'm still painting one last piece for my solo art show on the 28th of this month.  Today, I had to visit 2 different printers and drop off artwork at 2 separate galleries.  We put almost 100 miles on the car just driving around running all my art errands.  I'm so excited about this that I'm sure all this running around is going to be worth it.  

There is just something amazing about seeing all your work hung together in a solo show that makes you as an artist feel so happy.  It is kind of like having all your children home for the holidays or attending a family reunion when you haven't seen everybody for years.  I'm starting to line up artwork along the wall of my hallway and in my kitchen trying to maintain and organized approach as I have now less than two weeks to pull this all together. 

As I just walked past the hallway I couldn't help but notice just how many of my "Down Country Road" pieces feature cows.  It looks like a stampede of bovine beauties in my studio and so I thought I would share them with you.  And if I did the job I intended,  they all will         make you smile.

This is my newest painting and I just got it back from the printers and now am ordering a 24 x 36 inch giclee print made on stretched canvas.  Since this is the first time I have had a print made of my artwork,  I'm really excited to see how it will look.  So if you might be interested in owning the original or having a print of any of these beauties, just send me an email and we can discuss the details.  If you want to see my other works, check out my gallery on my website at JulieTownsendStudio.com

"Happy Cows"

"Always Greener"

"Fence Post Curiosity"

Who Needs a Tissue

"Good Morning Sunshine"

One Smiling Artist and a Couple of Happy Cows

I nearly finished this piece yesterday and I just couldn't wait to show it off.  When you have been working steadily on a piece for several weeks, like I have been with this one, there is a since of satisfaction that comes over you as you head to the finish line.  

I really experience so much fun as these paintings come to that completion stage.  This is when I decide on last minute additions to the composition that I think really add character to the overall piece.  In this case, I decided to add a spunky little male sparrow on the fence post and a small butterfly resting on yellow wildflowers.  The bright yellow and orange are a great balance to the signature blue morning glories growing up the old wood fence post.

As I painted on this piece, these last few days, I could almost imagine the scent of the sweet pasture grass, the sound of the birds in the distant trees and even feel the warm sunlight hitting my face.  This exact scene or a variation of it plays out over and over again across this big beautiful country.  If you have spent any amount of time driving across the middle section of this vast country, you know exactly the story I'm trying to tell you here with my paintbrushes.

Cows seem to be constantly grazing like giant grass machines. They are almost always curious to a fault.  I find that they will usually stop for a moment to stare back at you with their big brown eyes as they stand there trying to figure out what in the world you are doing.  Of course who wouldn't stare at you jumping up and down, flapping your arms in the air, and "Mooing" at them like a darn fool.

 I loved the challenge of painting the roan coloring of these shorthorns.  Mostly using a combination of Violet, Raw Umber and Burnt Sienna but if you look closely there are touches of Orange, Lavender and Light Ultramarine Blue and White making up the fur.  Between the bright colors and their comical faces this painting is sure to bring a smile to your face just like it did to mine.




I am titling this one "Happy Cows" because it is sure to make you happy!  This painting will be featured in my solo art show next month at the Whitney Library.  If you are going to be in the area between March 28th and May 30th, I would love for you to stop by the gallery there and let me know what you think.  My reception will be on March 28th and I will be there with several giveaways and drawings to make the evening special.  Here is an invite just for you.

Good Morning Sunshine!

 Good Morning Sunshine!  That is the name I decided to give this one.  Cows just have such expressive and curious faces and I LOVE painting them.

I actually finished this painting a couple weeks ago but between rain and  the busy holidays the time just flew by and we didn't get a chance to use the good camera to get some pictures of it. My cell phone takes photos that are probably adequate for a Facebook post but I really like to wait to show a picture here on my blog until I have a photo that is of a higher resolution.  Good photos on a blog are critical.

I have seen other artists paint a frame around their work and so I thought I would give it a try.  I like how it turned out and gives the cow more of a 3-D appearance.  She looks like she is popping out of the canvas.  I decided not to worry about the fact that the 12 inch width of the canvas really wasn't enough to handle this girls extra furry ears.  So I let them extend over and wrap around the side of the gallery wrap.  I think this adds to the charm of the composition.

Because the canvas is pretty full with the frame and the cow herself I kept the rest of the painting really simple.  No flowers or bugs to be found.  Only blades of really tall summer grass for her dining pleasure.

All in all I'm really pleased with the final outcome.  This piece will be included in my 2017 solo library show that I am once again calling "Down Country Roads". I had such a great time with this show in 2016 in Boulder City that I just don't think I'm finished with that theme yet. I am just having too much fun painting from memories of my Missouri country childhood.

The show starts March 28 and runs through May 30 at the Whitney Library.  I will be posting more specific details as the time comes closer but you might want to keep that in mind if you are going to be in the Las Vegas area this spring.

My goal is to have half the show be new pieces so I had better get busy painting more of these adorable barn yard friends.

I'm planning some fun giveaways and contests leading up to the show and for those that attend the reception.  Send me your email address if you would like to be on my mailing list.  I would LOVE to hear from you!

For more of my artwork be sure and check out my Website !













J