I suppose it would be a pretty standard assumption to conclude that when an artist has "finished" a piece, then that piece is done, and it will never change.
Things are perhaps a little bit different when you paint on rocks, especially if you are always working in the narrow band of painting mandalas such as I am. A lot of times what I'm working with is basically variations of a theme, and that also means that over time certain design elements become what I would call "improved."
Few minor changes, on the right
As part of the ongoing process of re photographing all the finished stones I have in my Etsy shop, and moving stones for sale from other online venues to my Etsy shop my wife and I have been discussing how certain stones are looking a little "dated" because similar designs made more recently are just better.
So today we took on a particular type of stone design which I call "Zero Point stones" and I went back and engaged in some minor touch ups to — for lack of a better description — improve the designs.
The changes are mostly quite small, but they add some contrast to several designs, and a bit of finesse where the lines were crude before.
Original
That might sound sacrilegious or like selling out to some, but I'm also trying to keep in mind the commercial aspect of what I'm doing and presenting only the best work out there. Besides, I pay for every listing I have up and so I want to give each one the best possible chance of actually selling.
So the pictures I'm presenting here are just a little bit of documentation to show how a few designs can be changed and it improves the overall look of an item.
Retouched version
Of course it remains to be seen whether these little changes will actually do anything to help sales but that's a secondary consideration. At this point I can just say that I like the way they look better!
This is definitely not something I do often, but sometimes it is warranted.
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2025.08.02 AS-TXT-337/307