Fresh Look for 2015

I hope you all had a Merry Christmas and are looking to 2015 with joy and excitement.  Here is this year's Family Christmas Photo

Merry Christmas from the Townsend's

I had to include our Funny Christmas Picture too!

The past two days I have been working to overhaul the looks of my website and this blog.  Gone are the heavy dark colors that draw your eye away from the main focus of the website.  I have just a few more house cleaning tasks to do on my website and I will be done with my remodel and then it's back to the studio for me.

Approaching the new year is a great time to begin scouting out other websites to see what the professionals are doing and what catches your eye.  If you don't have your own website and or blog to showcase your artwork or whatever you are passionate about, then I encourage you to step up and just do it.  I found Weebly.com to be fairly easy to navigate and as you can see I am on blogger.com.  Both are free and provide a good internet presence if you just take the time to keep them updated.

Check out my website at julietownsendstudio.com

Blessings Often Come in Tiny Packages

This week I was inspired to create this little 8 x 10 acrylic painting of a nesting hummingbird based on a photo taken by my Las Vegas/Tecopa artist friend, Nancy Good.  She had a great deal of drama this past year at her home when a neighboring property owner decided to do her a favor and cut down all their mature trees on one side of the property while they were out of town. What a great and thoughtful neighbor she has.  Between the loss of property and all the legal wrangling of a criminal and civil case that followed could really drag her spirits down if she would let it.  The fact that she found a nesting hummingbird on one of her remaining trees gave her great encouragement and that blessed me.  I was so moved by the story and since I adore these tiny little creatures I just had try to paint her photo.

I learned that the hummingbird nest is usually built in the forked branches of trees but this particular little bird decided this pine cone was a suitable building site.  The tiny cup shaped nest, no more than 2 inches in diameter, is made of many of the normal building materials that you would think of when it comes to bird nests, twigs, leaves, moss and hair were all on the list.  I was surprised to find that spiderwebs seem to be a key ingredient in the construction of this hummingbird nursery. Built entirely by the mother hummer,  the spiderwebs provide the glue to hold it all together and the elasticity to allow the nest to expand as the chicks hatch and grow.   Seems that the entire responsibility of "Nursery Duty" also fall her small little wings.

To purchase the original painting or order prints of "Nursery Duty" you can go to my website at JulieTownsendStudio.com.

"Nursery Duty"- 8x10 Original Acrylic