It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas...

Well, not so much yet. Today is the 1st day of October and that fact makes me happy even if it was still 95 degrees here in Las Vegas.  I had the joy of being part several artists who got to display their work and to paint today outside of Boulder City's Art in the Park event.  I've participated in a number of these outside festivals over the past few years and as an artist and have until today gone home with every piece of art that I back breakingly hauled out.  Today was different. I actually sold a couple of small pieces and I am ecstatic about that fact.  I met a lot of great people and even finished a little piece that I started the night before that I'm really happy with.  This little mouse, complete with little red paint paw prints makes me smile.

I took along my acrylic paints and a WIP piece I'm working on of an owl along with me today.  The plan was that we were to stage painting demos throughout the day to draw attention from the public as they walk past on their way to the park.  Acrylic are tricky in hot dry weather.  They just dry so fast that I find myself just fighting with them to blend the paints before they are completely dry.  So I decided instead to work on a little sketch I had started the night before of a little Christmas mouse.  All day the words to the famous Christmas poem by Clement Clarke Moore, "Twas the Night Before Christmas, when all through the house.  Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse" kept rolling around in my head. The difference was that I would change the last phrase to "Except for a Mouse".  This little guy is hard at work putting on the final touches of the decorations and you can see just how hard he must work to get those Christmas balls painted just right and hung on the branches with such care.  I believe that will be the title for this fun little drawing "Except for the Mouse".


Have a blessed October 1st.  Take time to be Thankful, Look at Beautiful Art, and enjoy the Fall Leaves in what seems like a very crazy world at times.  

Here are a few other furry little rodent sketches I thought you might enjoy looking at. For more of my artwork, please check out my website at JulieTownsendStudio.com and please leave me a message.  I would love to hear from you.

Accounting and Art- Used to be Like Oil and Water

I  know you have probably heard the term "Creative Finance" but I have just given that term a whole new interpretation.  It is probably hard for many of you to imagine that it would be possible to pull off combining both accounting and art together in the same piece but I think I've accomplished just that here in my new series that I call "Confessions of a Recovering Accountant".  

These pieces are both colorful and expressive and yet at the same time simplistic.  For me these 3 pieces represent the sum of my professional life after spending 30+ years in some capacity doing bookkeeping, accounting and business administration.  At times, I consider with some regret those years where art was for me but a distant memory of a youthful passion.  I feared that somehow that ability to be creative had totally disappeared and I would never get it back.  People that I had worked with side by side for years had no idea that I had once possessed a hidden talent to draw and paint and now they express shock as they come to visit my solo shows or the galleries where my art hangs.  

In less than two years, my life really has changed drastically.  Rather than stressing over the accounts receivable collections report, balancing the general ledger or working to prepare my monthly board presentation, I am now always working on a current painting, planning a new painting, sitting a gallery or sketching in my journal.  This series has been so freeing to me and I already have ideas to includes several more pieces. I have ideas to include my beloved Monroe 10 Key and another that I have already titled "Cooking the Books".  

To check out these and my other works, please visit my website at JulieTownsendStudio.com

Coloring My World

Right Brain vs Left Brain

Creative Finance