A rare two-handed day!

I am gradually coming to terms with the fact that my productivity, art-wise, will just be low for a while.  And that's okay.  Of course, if I get commissions I will still fulfill them in a good amount of time, but in terms of just day-to-day doing art stuff...yeah, I won't be setting any "do two paintings or more a month!  Paint a stone a day!" type goals for a long time.

Except for that magical time called Babysitting Day.  And then I can do anything for a few hours!

These will be coming to Etsy one day...as soon as I get enough time to take pictures of these skull necklaces on some other surface than my desk...

 

I'm really lucky to have a bunch of baby-minders that I trust...mostly family, mostly the grandparents, but one particular non-family friend comes every week or every other week so that I can have a break.  Of course, last week I had to use that break to get my tax papers together (yay...), but this week, and the week before that, I got to use that time for ART.

I hadn't painted a stone in probably a year...it kinda shows, huh?

I'm trying to simplify my future stone- and box- and pendant-painting operations...maybe keep it to two or three colors, and abstract mandalas.  Those seem to be more popular anyway.  I painted a bunch of stones in bright, springy colors, and I'm going to make plain white mandalas on them, like this one.  I really like the look of this.  I'm also going to experiment with painting the natural stones, without putting a color down first.  Y'know, whenever I have time. :P

And I finally finished this painting, which I'm pretty sure I had started before my son was BORN.

I had originally painted this painting in the dearly departed Brushes app on my phone, where it looked like this...

And I really liked it, so I wanted to make it a real no-kidding painting on canvas.  I like the results!  I have other pieces I did in Brushes (and come on, someone make a version for that that works with the current IOS, already!) that I want to convert into acrylic someday too.  I wish I had more time to paint with acrylics these days.

I have some more digital pieces lined up, too.  Now these, I can do with a baby on my lap!  Here's a preview...just the sketch so far:

Not necessarily for Easter, but just because I like rabbits and I thought this would look cool. :)

So that's my productivity as of late...wedged in between figuring out teething remedies, watching old episodes of Downton Abbey (I just finished Season 2, nobody tell me what happens!), and scheduling repairs at our house and our rental house (fun...).  Um...hashtag #blessed?  Actually, yeah...my life is different than it was two years ago, ambition-wise and art-output-wise, but it's pretty darn good.