Artists: Care of our Most Important Tools: Our Hands

  I love my brushes! Care for them takes time and diligence. Between paintings, I scrape my palette, clean my paint tube caps. I change my turpentine, and occasionally, I even clean my glasses! hehe.

  What about the tools we use more than any others as artists? No matter the task, most of us are using our hands, and they do a lot more than painting or sketching. In and out of dish water, cooking, laundry, housekeeping and sometimes gardening, they can suffer a lot of abuse. Add to that, many like me suffer from arthritis. My hands get cold and stiff when painting, and sometimes I have to remove the brush from my hand with my other hand when joints don't move easily.
   We care for families, nurture fellow artists and friends, and for me time is well spent, between paintings taking care of myself.
   Originally, I made this two part video simply to show how I do a manicure including exfoliating and hand massage. I looked then at my new blank canvas, and thought of my artist friends, and wondered how many of you had been good to yourselves today.
   Most of you have been so good to me, and I know you know how to be tender, because you've nurtured me. smiles. So, if for no other reason than to remind you that you're important too, here's the second part of my manicure videos showing a little self love. smiles. Take care of those hands. I need you to keep creating!
with love,
tina jones
Here's a link to Part 1, and the video below goes directly to Part 2: Exfoliating and Massage (The best part!)