My school has been on break this past week (plus a couple days the week before). I know that I for one was glad to have some time off to recharge and rejuvenate. I also know that I had a significant amount of work to do this week in preparing for an upcoming festival in which I’ll be selling my artwork. The phrase “a productive break” sounds like an oxymoron, because one should rest during a break. And I have been, there’s been a nice balance. But even I am surprised at just how productive this break turned out to be. There are times when I go months without picking up a paintbrush for my own work (art class prep not withstanding).

I completed eight paintings this week. EIGHT.

As you can imagine, yes, my shoulders and arms and hands are aching. I am physically fatigued. But I am pleased and relieved to report that I did not send myself into an arthritic flare-up with all this work. I’m very glad for that. I was not rendered non-functional. That may be partly due to the fact that sometimes I literally have to wait for layers of paint to dry, so I was forced to take breaks every so often. I’ve been enjoying binge-watching “Once Upon a Time” on Disney Plus during those break times. Great show, this is my second rewatch of the series, and it’s so full of detail that there’s always something new to notice. But I digress.

Gosh. Eight paintings. Sometimes that’s more than I complete in a full year.

There’s more preparation to do before the festival, including one more painting I’d like to try to get done, because it looks really cool inside my head. I also made a fantastic discovery this week that I can easily get sellable prints made of my work, which will be a total game changer. Some twelve-ish years ago, I’d explored the possibility of getting prints made, and ended up paying like $60 for a “test print” of a painting, and was very put off by how expensive the whole process was going to be. I simply couldn’t afford it. These days, though, with technological advancements in both photographing and printing images, and knowing that there’s a difference between prints from a local copy center and professional art prints, what I can get from said copy center is in my opinion great quality for what I need, given my budget. I tend to get a little attached to my work sometimes. Selling prints can make a version available that I can sell to people at a more affordable rate, and/or give me a chance to keep a copy of a painting that I can sell the original of for more money (and of course still sell prints of it even after the original has sold).

The other item on my agenda this week had been to try to reorganize my art lesson plans and materials, but, given everything else I got done this week, it’s okay that this task will wait until next week.

I’m an art teacher. And it’s the greatest professional joy of my life. But this week, I got to remember that I’m an artist. That’s worth any amount of soreness in my hands.

By the way — now that I know how to get prints made — I’ll be working on figuring out how to offer prints for sale here on the blog; one of my pages is my art gallery, and surely there’s a feasible way to add purchase links, so, stay tuned! (Or, if you know how that works, comment to let me know!)