Have you read any good books lately?  Or should I ask if you have read any books at all?  What is that one book you have read and you consider it to my your all time favorite book?  For me personally, I love to read but I consider myself a slow reader.  I will confess that it has been a while since I have read a book.  These days my time is pretty much taken between creating art, marketing my art and watching grandchildren.  I do miss reading so I might try to re

Over the years, I have read many books that I thoroughly enjoyed. I have actually read the book "Shepherd of the Hills" by Harold Bell Wright 5 times over the years.  It is a great story and I would consider to be one of my favorites.  Other good books that jump to mind are "Christy" buy Katherine Marshall, "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Bronte', "Anne of Green Gables" by Lucy Maud Montgomery and anything written by Jane Austin or Janette Oke.  

I may not have read a book recently but I have included them in several art pieces.  You might find them entertaining so let me share them with you.  I hope you like mice in artwork because it seems that if I draw a book I must add a mouse sitting on top.  

Just How Many Shades of Blue Do I Need? AS MANY AS I CAN GET!

Who said, "You Can't Teach an Old Dog New Tricks?" This past week I have had several opportunities to watch several artists at work on YouTube.  What an amazing tool we have at our fingertips.  If I had this available to me when I was younger there is no telling how much further along my art skills would be.  Oh well, if there is one thing I do know, you can't roll back time so making changes to ones past is not an option.  None of has have a guarantee of tomorrow. That leaves us only with today in our control.  So today, I am going to embrace my opportunity to practice more with drawing textures and YouTube will be my amazing go to resource.

First artist- I want to share with you is Lisa Clough of Lachri.com.  I've only begun to touch the surface of the vast amount of information she has made available on her website via free YouTube tutorials.  I'm very interested in working on her oil over acrylic techniques.

Color Pencil practice exercises added to my sketch journal

Second artist- I have found a wonderful color pencil artist named Sheldene Visagie at http://www.sheldenefineart.com/ .  She has a great technique and I have learned a number of things about color pencils just by watching her YouTube tutorials.  I worked on several of her blending practice videos and here are my results.   I realized that with the exercise that she had several shades of Prismacolor blue pencils that I don't have in my limited sets.  I made due but felt that I had to use shades that were not really related and had to work hard to get them to have a continuous blended effect.  The blended color wheel was also and excellent practice exercise that I highly recommend.

A few months ago I bought a set of what I thought would be 96 Prismacolor pencils but turned out to actually be more like 72 colors because the set included 12 verithin pencils and 12 watercolor pencils so it wasn't actually what I thought I was buying.  So I just placed an Amazon order for the largest set, 150 pencils and they arrived just today.  I'm SO excited to start using them.   First though, I am going to make a color reference chart that I can use when trying to match a particular color.  That will probably be a future blog.  What made this purchase even more exciting was that during the few days that I had them in my shopping cart the price dropped like $10 to only $89 on Amazon Prime. Down the road I might invest in a set of  Faber Castell Polychromos pencils but right now I'm pretty happy with the wax based pencils.

Fun Practice Exercise for working on different textures.

This week I have also been playing around with textures in drawing.  When you are teaching a basic drawing class each week you have to stay one up on your students and I thought that texture was a good lesson for week 5 of my after school art club I'm teaching so I started with these fun little exercises.  I think they look pretty awesome and I love how it works to use the fingers of my hand to demonstrate the different textures.

Just Paper and a Pencil

Well....there might be some ink involved and of course it's not just one pencil but rather a set of colored pencils but you get the idea.  I do love the freedom that colored pencils and a sketchbook affords me as an artist.  With very little effort you can enjoy creating a beautiful piece of art without hauling a suitcase full of supplies, easel and canvas around with you.  It affords you the ability to be discrete and yet at the same time i you can draw plenty of attention to yourself as an artist if you so choose.

I thought I would share a few of my most recent sketches that I have done in an effort to begin building a portfolio of such with the future goal of perhaps getting some illustration work or to have some of them perhaps licensed.  I know it is a stretch but you have to start somewhere and the research I have done so far says to take 3 to 6 months to build a portfolio of ideas before you start sending them out to potential clients.

These particular pieces are going to get framed this week and be on display for the First Friday event next week at City of the World Gallery in Downtown Las Vegas. I love the energy of First Friday and I'm really looking forward to seeing the response I receive from the public regarding my little drawings. You can be assured that I will be sharing in future blogs about that exact thing in the near future.

If you are in Las Vegas this next week, please consider stopping by and checking out the art.  City of the World is an amazing gallery full of many art styles and genre.  You are sure to find something to love.

Think Big

You Stole My Heart

Enjoy a Good Book

The Start of Something Big....

So as part of my Year Of Art in 2016, I want to create a portfolio of sketches.  Don't worry, I will continue to paint on canvases and cowbells,  but I want to develop my skills in the illustration arena.  I've been reading a number of articles about getting your art licensed and this thought excites me. The one e-book suggests that you take 3-6 months and develop a portfolio of ideas so that you can share them with potential companies that buy art for licensing.  I will make a little confession here that a secret dream of mine for years has been to have my art published on a Leaning Tree card so art licensing has been a goal of mine long time.

The last several days I have been a bit under the weather, so yesterday I brought all my drawing supplies out of the studio and arranged them near the sofa and the warmth of the wood stove.  I spent a good portion of the day drinking hot tea, watching movies, drawing and trying to stay warm.  The result of these efforts is a little 5x7 sketch that I'm calling "Take the Time to Enjoy a Good Book".  I think this idea has potential to make a cute card.

"Take Time to Enjoy a Good Book"- 

So my first sketch for my portfolio is almost finished.  I need to decide if I should do something to the background at this point.  I don't want to distract from the book but if I put a light color for the background then the book might actually stand out more.  It a lot of light colors so I can see a beige watercolor wash perhaps.

Here are some other recent drawings I have done for my darling grandchildren for their birthdays. I'm trying to create a unique piece of art for each grandchild as part of their birthday gift from me.  I never liked buy cards from the rack and so I thought it would be much better if I tried to create them something special.  These are the three 3 year old grandchildren and I had so much fun turning them each into little cartoon characters.

JoJoda....The Force is Strong With This One!

Katherine- and her "Lovely Lime Green Tutu"

"It's a Bird, It's a Plane...no It's Super Noah"

Telling a Story with a Paint Brush

As an artist, I'm having a blast with this project that I recently started. It has been something in the back of my mind for some time and this week I took the initial step to actually start putting my idea to paper.   I know that I am just a few sketching into it but I really wanted to share some of the fun I am having.  I'm not sure if the end result will actually be a published children's storybook, but I am having fun illustrating what I hope will be at least a real keepsake for my grandchildren.  I have a lot of work to do since I currently have 6 amazing grandchildren all wanting their stories to be told.  

I'm just using watercolor and pen and ink to make these sketches.  I have no idea if this is the best medium to actually use to illustrate a story, but I feel I just have to get the ideas on paper and they can then be refined as I learn the correct processes.  It is going to be a learning experience for me but I'm feeling up to the challenge.  

With a real dog that is very much as big as a small pony, the inspiration for this story is not hard to come by.  I have all kinds of funny ideas about the problems and benefits that one wee little girl could face with such a large pet.  

When you are just a snip of a girl, taking your giant dog for a walk is more like a fun park thrill adventure than a chore.  

Sleeping can be a challenge when your bed dog is more like a bed HOG!

Tea parties can be very frustrating affair when one of the guests have such bad manners that knock over all the invited guests, break the table, step on your entrees and spill the party beverages.

CONSIDER LEAVING ME A COMMENT....I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR FROM YOU!

I promise to keep updating this blog as I come up with more and more pages to my story.  If you are interested in seeing more of my artwork, please click the gallery tab above or visit my webpage at julietownsendstudios.com