Marketing & Social·Ananya Iyer·1d

I keep reading these threads about which platform is dead and which algorithm is punishing you and I have no insight to add because the only actual sale I got from social media this month came from a throwaway reel of me sharpening a palette knife. Just a plain knife and the ring of it against the sharpening stone. No music, no talking, 11 seconds, shot on my phone propped against a mug. A woman from Pune messaged asking if I could do a similar one of her grandfather's old house before it gets demolished. Paid a deposit before I even sent her a sketch. Meanwhile the carefully staged studio shots I spent an afternoon on, the ones with the good light and the composition I actually thought about, got maybe 40 views between them. I have stopped pretending I understand any of this. The algorithm wants what it wants. Sometimes I think it's just picking the videos where I'm clearly doing something and not performing. The minute I set up the ring light it knows and punishes me for it.

General·Ananya Iyer·2d

There was this old bungalow off Cunningham Road, mustard yellow with these deep verandah columns I must have sketched three times. Beautiful proportion, proper classical. Last I heard a builder had bought it but nothing was happening, so I kept assuming I'd get one more chance at it. Went past today for something else entirely and it's just a pit. Not even a construction site yet, just an excavated hole with a hoarding. I stood there like an idiot for ten minutes. I have the sketches. That's the thing that keeps me going at it, but also the thing that stings a bit. Because the sketch is lovely and someone else will see it later and think oh, what a charming old house, what a nice moment in time. They won't feel the actual loss. The paper keeps the building but it can't keep the fact that it used to be someone's home, with someone's washing on the line and a dog that barked at me the first time I set up my stool outside the gate. I don't know where I'm going with this except that drawing things as they vanish is a strange job to have chosen. Some days it feels like the only honest thing I do. Other days it feels like taking photographs at a funeral and calling it art.

Studio Life·Ananya Iyer·3d

Moved my desk out to the front verandah last week because the bedroom studio was hitting me with four walls and no air. Best decision in months. The auntie next door has now asked three times if my AC is broken, and the dog from two houses down comes and sits at the gate watching me paint like he's critiquing my composition. The light out here is genuinely different. I keep catching myself sketching the same old house across the street that I've painted maybe six times already, but at this hour the shadow falls completely differently and I can't help it. Downside is every passerby thinks you're available for conversation. Today the plumber who was fixing the neighbour's tap spent ten minutes giving me unsolicited advice on mixing skin tones. He wasn't wrong though. That's the embarrassing part. 🙂

Wins·Ananya Iyer·5d

For seven years I billed other people's buildings. Architects send invoices for work that's already done, measured, approved, nothing emotional about it. Today I sent an invoice for my own painting. A small one, a balcony sketch of a house on Sampige Road that's going to be rubble by next monsoon, but someone wanted it enough to pay for it. The whole morning I kept going back and forth on the number. Undercharged myself twice, then sat there embarrassed and corrected it. My husband found me staring at the PDF and just said "send it na." So I did. It's funny because the actual hard part wasn't the painting. It was deciding that my work had a price at all. Architects know exactly what an hour of their time costs. Painters apparently have to relearn it every single time. Anyway. The money barely covers the paints. Doesn't matter. First one's out. Here's to the next few. And to Sampige Road houses getting a little something before they're gone.

Studio Life·Ananya Iyer·6d

There's this one mechanical pencil from my architecture days, 0.3mm, must be fifteen years old now. I use it for anything that matters - the underlay before the ink goes down on a house I actually care about. And every single time I pull it out I think, this is the one day it runs out of lead, and I've never found a refill that feels the same. I keep a whole stash of cheaper 0.5s for sketching out ideas that'll probably get binned anyway. It's not rational. The sentimental value of a pencil is genuinely stupid. But there's something about drawing that first line with the same tool I used when I was terrified of a construction site at 24 that just settles me into the work. Does anyone else have a tool they've elevated way past its actual function?

Studio Life·Ananya Iyer·1w

There's this old bungalow off Millers Road, the kind with the deep verandah and those green wooden shutters that still shut properly. It's coming down next week for another apartment block. I knew that before I sat down to sketch it, and I still spent two hours on it this morning, then came home and started a watercolour from the sketch because the sketch alone wasn't enough. I keep telling myself it's just practice. Perspective, foliage, that particular way bougainvillea sits against a lime-washed wall. But it's not practice, is it. It's the same reason I took photos of my grandmother's house before they sold it and I've never looked at them a second time but I can't bring myself to delete them either. The funny part is the occupant came out and watched me for a while. Old gentleman, probably lived there fifty years. He didn't say anything, just nodded at the end and went back inside. I don't know if he was pleased or annoyed or just tired. Maybe all three. I'll finish the painting this week. It feels important that it exists before the house doesn't.

Pricing·Ananya Iyer·1w

Sold a set of three watercolour sketches of houses off MG Road to a regular client last month. Flat ₹6,000 for the set, which felt fair at the time because it's a nice round number and I priced it on the spot without thinking. Then I tallied up the actual drawing time, not even counting the two mornings I went back because the light was wrong. Twenty-one hours. That's ₹285 an hour before paper, paint, and the frames I threw in as a "goodwill" gesture because they're a repeat buyer. I keep telling myself the goodwill matters, the relationship matters, the next commission matters. And it does. But I did the same maths my old architecture firm used to do on billable hours and I winced. The worst part is I know exactly why I did it. Round numbers feel easier to say out loud. I'm still scared that if I quote ₹9,000 or ₹10,000 for a set, someone will just go "okay, no thanks" and I'll have lost it. But honestly, the client who haggles over ₹3,000 is not the client I want anyway. Still haven't raised my price for the next set. Working up to it.

Gallery Outreach·Ananya Iyer·1w

The first gallery that took my work asked me to make my sketches "more colourful" because watercolour-and-ink of crumbling old buildings didn't read as sellable. I think about this a lot because I said no, sort of. I brightened a couple of pieces, felt wrong about it, and walked the rest back. That gallery did nothing for me in the end, but the lesson stuck. Anyone else been asked to adjust what you make to fit what they think sells? Did you bend or hold the line? And did it work out either way?

Studio Life·Ananya Iyer·1w

There's this old bungalow on Lavelle Road, the kind with the mossy compound wall and a jackfruit tree you can see from the bus stop. I sketched it twice this month, once in ink on a Tuesday and once in watercolour from the footpath because the security guard finally stopped shooing me off. Went past this morning for a third go and there was already an excavator in the compound, half the roof gone. The jackfruit tree is still standing, which is more than I expected. I keep telling myself the sketch is what matters, that I'm documenting the street not the building. But there's something about losing a place you only got to know by drawing it. You feel the loss almost like you lived there. Anyway. The painting from Tuesday turned out decent. The light was doing something good that day. I'll finish it now, properly, framed and everything. Feels like the least I owe that house.

Wins·Ananya Iyer·1w

Went back this morning to the old house on the corner near Sunday market. The one with the chajja that's been drooping for years. The demolition guys were already there, and the front wall is gone since last week. I sat across the road with my little stool and drew the gap where the drawing room used to be, the staircase just hanging there in open air. Thing is, I've painted that house maybe six times over the last two years. Every time meaning to catch it before this exact morning. And when it finally happened I almost turned around and went home because it felt like standing at someone's funeral with a sketchbook. But I forced myself to sit. Twenty minutes. The plaster dust kept drifting over my palette. There's something strange about drawing a thing while it's actively becoming a memory. The sketch isn't even good, honestly. But I'm glad I did it instead of driving away. I think that's the whole practice some days, just showing up even when it hurts to look.

Gallery Outreach·Ananya Iyer·1w

Genuinely curious about this, because I think we all imagine the "they discovered me" story but I've noticed most people I know actually did the awkward thing themselves. Mine was terrible. I showed up at a small gallery near MG Road with a folder of prints, no appointment, and the owner looked at me like I'd wandered in to ask for directions. I basically shoved two paintings at her and fled. Nothing came of it for a year. Then she called me out of nowhere asking if I'd show in a group exhibition. Just like that. So I still don't know if it counts as walking in or being found. Which one was it for you? Did you knock on doors, or did someone come to you?

Pricing·Ananya Iyer·2w

Found out last week that a watercolour commission I did of someone's ancestral home got flipped. I charged ₹4,500 for it, which took me about three days on and off, and the client apparently sold it to a relative for ₹18,000 not even two months later. I only know because the relative herself DM'd me asking if I'd do another one like it. I don't even know how to feel. Part of me is flattered, clearly the work holds value. But I sat and did the math on my own time that night and it came out to maybe ₹110 an hour. That's less than what I used to pay my auto driver for a round trip to the site. The annoying part is I'm not even angry at the client, I'm angry at myself. I priced it as a "nice thing for a friend's family" instead of as a piece of art that takes skill and years of drawing buildings. Nobody in that transaction underpaid me except me. Still haven't figured out what the right number is but it's definitely not ₹4,500. Worst is I now have two more requests lined up from people who heard about the first one, and I have to raise my price in front of the same circle of people. Awkward.

Studio Life·Ananya Iyer·2w

Went out this morning to sketch a house off Richmond Road, the kind with the curved verandah and teak columns, and found the demolition crew already there. Roof off, most of the back wall down. The foreman saw my sketchbook and just nodded at me like, yes, daily occurrence, get on with it. So I sat across the road and drew what was left. And honestly the strangest thing happened, the half-drawn house was more interesting to sketch than the whole one would have been. The brickwork where the plaster fell away, the exposed beams, the bathroom tiles still clinging to a wall that had no room behind it anymore. I was making this nice little study of a house mid-death and I felt awful about enjoying it. I looked up the property card later. 1948. That house was older than independence itself and I was out there enjoying the demolition like it was a landscape. I don't know what to do with this feeling. I'm glad I drew it. I also hate that I drew it. Both things are true and I can't decide if that makes me a documentarian or just someone watching the city fall down for entertainment. Anyway. Two studies done, both half-hearted and honestly better for it. Might pin them up side by side and see what the week makes of them.

Gallery Outreach·Ananya Iyer·2w

Two years ago I got my first gallery offer and was so thrilled I almost signed without reading the contract properly. Turned out they wanted 50% commission and the framing costs on me, plus exclusive rights for a region I didn't even know was in there. I walked away after a call with an artist friend who talked some sense into me. Which makes me wonder, has anyone here actually regretted saying yes to a gallery? Not the scammy ones, but a perfectly legit gallery that just turned out to be a bad fit? What made you finally walk out or ride it out? Mine: the exclusivity thing. Felt like being kept on a leash for a gallery that barely promoted me.

Pricing·Ananya Iyer·2w

Someone asked me to paint their family home before the demolition crew moves in. Legacy piece, three generations of their family grew up there. I quoted them a price and only after sending it did I realise I hadn't charged anything for the emotional weight of it. Just paper, paint, and my hours. And honestly? I'd do it again. That house gets torn down next month and the only record of it will be my painting hanging in their new flat. How do you bill for that? You don't. You price what it costs you and quietly accept that the rest is unpaid work you chose. Still, I keep thinking about the architect salary I walked away from. This is the trade I made, na. Some days it feels like a bad one.

Wins·Ananya Iyer·3w

Was sketching this old Raj-era guesthouse off MG Road last week, the one they're pulling down next month. Owner came out, older fellow, stood behind me for a while not saying anything. I braced for the usual "why are you drawing my building, is something wrong." Instead he said, "Take your time. Take two hours. I'll get you chai." And then he just left me alone with the whole front verandah, the arches, the bougainvillea gone wild over the gate. Two hours of no one asking anything of me. He came back with a steel tumbler of chai and asked if he could keep the painting when I was done. I said I'd frame it for him. He got a bit quiet. "My grandfather built that place," he said. "Nobody's asked me a single question about it in forty years." Finished it yesterday and walked it over. He wasn't there, his daughter took it, said she'd hang it in the hall. I don't know why that's stuck with me more than any sale. Maybe because half the time I wonder if anyone actually cares what I'm documenting. Turns out the ones who lived it do. They just don't say so until you sit down with a brush in front of their house.

Wins·Ananya Iyer·3w

Small win but it's been sitting with me. A friend of a friend who saw my sketches at a coffee shop asked me to paint her grandmother's house before it gets demolished. She's from the same area I grew up in, so I knew exactly what those houses look like from inside even with the paint peeling and wires everywhere. I quoted her a price, I always underquote, working on that, and she transferred the full amount the same evening without me even asking for an advance. Half the time I chase people for months after they say they'll buy. This lady just paid and said take your time, no rush. I delivered it yesterday and she cried. Like actually held the painting and cried because I'd gotten the jasmine creeper on the compound wall right, and the little verandah step where she used to sit with her grandmother. She said I should charge more. I'm not going to, but I'm framing that in my head for the next time I'm scared to name a price. Painting houses that are about to fall down, and people still want them kept alive somewhere. That's the whole thing na. Made my week.

Artwork Feedback·Ananya Iyer·3w

I painted this old house on Wheeler Road maybe three weeks back. One of those 60s bungalows, the kind with the deep verandah and the latticed jali bricks above the door. Sat on the footpath across the road for an hour, the owner's son came out and asked if I was doing it for a project. I said no, just because it's beautiful. He said, "Oh. We're demolishing it next month." Went past today while running an errand. The chajja is already gone. The jali bricks are in a pile by the gate. It took them a week. I have the painting. That's something. But it's sitting in my studio and I keep looking at it and thinking I got the proportions of that verandah slightly wrong, and now there's no building left to go check against. So it just stays wrong forever. That's the part that's bothering me more than the demolition, honestly. That I'll never know if it was my eye or the light. Do other people here live with that? The painting becoming the only record, and no way to verify it?

Gallery Outreach·Ananya Iyer·3w

Mine was a tea shop. No, really. The owner had hung some of my urban sketches by the counter just for fun, and a woman who ran a small gallery in Indiranagar saw one while waiting for her chai. She asked the owner who did them, tracked me down through Instagram, and I had work hanging in a real gallery three weeks later. All because I did a favour for a friend who runs a tea shop. It made me wonder how many of us got our first foot in the door through some completely sideways route instead of the cold email or the walk-in. So tell me na, where did your first gallery actually come from? Was it someone who saw your work in the wild, a random connection, or did you have to push for it yourself? I didn't realise how rare the "I asked directly" path is until I started hearing stories.

Gallery Outreach·Ananya Iyer·3w

Mine was pure nerve. I carried a portfolio of urban sketches into this small gallery near MG Road, fully expecting to be told they don't take walk-ins. The owner's assistant said they were busy, and I almost left, but I'd come all that way in the heat so I just stood there awkwardly until someone finally looked at my stuff. She flipped through maybe four pages and said "bring these back properly framed." That was it. No contract, no email, just that sentence. I got paid in the end, eventually, after chasing. But that one sentence changed everything for me. How did yours happen? Did you cold-walk like me, or did they spot your work online first? I'm genuinely curious which path actually gets you in the door these days.

Studio Life·Ananya Iyer·4w

Went back to that old compound on the Basavanagudi road this morning and the gate was open for once, workers loading rubble. The wall I've sketched at least four times this year, the one with the bougainvillea growing right through the crack in the plaster, it's half gone. They let me stand there and finish anyway. Drew the remaining half and the gap where the other half used to be, because that's what was actually there. I don't know what I'm supposed to do with these. I have a whole pile of paintings of buildings that are now just dust and a bigger pile of ones I keep meaning to go back to before that happens. The sketch I did today is the first one where the building isn't there anymore while I'm painting it. Strange feeling. Half grief, half relief that I got there in time for at least half of it. Anyway. The dust from demolition does terrible things to watercolour if you're not careful. Note to self: keep a cloth in the bag, not just the one for brushes.

Studio Life·Ananya Iyer·4w

I spent nearly two weeks not painting. Not because I was busy, which I was, but because I kept telling myself I'd only start once I went to the art store and got proper cold-pressed paper. The good stuff. Something deserving of the sketch I had in my head. Finally today I was in front of the stationery shelf in a random supermarket near my mother's place, of all places, and they had these thin spiral-bound sketchbooks. Rough cartridge, ghost of a grain. The kind schoolkids use for drawing class. Ninety rupees or something. Bought it out of spite, basically. And I sat on my balcony this evening and painted the water tank on the neighbour's roof, just the tank and the wires and the late light hitting the wall behind it. Nothing ambitious. It took me forty minutes and the paper buckled a little where I overworked the wash, and the whole thing has that cheap-paper fuzz that I used to hate when I was in architecture school. I'm honestly a bit in love with it. That fuzz has a texture you can't get on the fancy stuff. Funny how the good paper became another excuse to not work. I'm going to give myself permission to ruin a few more of these cheap books before I even think about touching my nice blocks again.

Gallery Outreach·Ananya Iyer·4w

I got my first gallery show because a gallerist saw me sketching a crumbling old house from the street and stopped to ask what I was doing. I thought she was going to tell me to move along, honestly. But she watched for a bit, gave me her card, and two months later I had a wall. Pure accident, zero strategy. What about you guys? What's the weirdest way a gallery connection ever happened for you? I want the stories that don't fit the "I emailed, they said yes" template.

Wins·Ananya Iyer·4w

Someone bought one of my originals this week. A small one, the old house on Mosque Road with the bougainvillea that's now gone. Honestly I nearly didn't even put proper glass on it, I was planning to keep it herself and just did a simple frame. But a friend insisted, said you frame everything like it matters. And the funny thing is, the buyer was someone who walked past while I was sketching it on site, months ago, and asked me about the house. She remembered me. The painting was still sitting in my pile of unsold work and she recognised it. I keep thinking about how close it came to being a flimsy frame. And also how the house itself is just a slab now. But this little paper version went somewhere with someone who actually cares about the building that was there. That feels right, somehow. Selling art is weird. But I'll take it.

Studio Life·Ananya Iyer·4w

I have this folder on my phone called "later" and it's got about 400 photos of old Bangalore houses, balconies, gate details, peeling paint on compound walls. I scroll through it constantly but I won't paint from most of them. There's no logic to it. Some of them are gorgeous, the light is doing exactly what I love. But I've decided they're not ready, and I don't know what "ready" even means. It's been two years of this folder growing. The houses themselves aren't waiting around for me. Three of the ones I shot in that folder got demolished before I ever touched them properly. I have the photos but it's not the same as drawing them while they were standing. My husband says just paint them, you're hoarding them like a miser. He's right, of course he's right. Walked past another gap this morning where the old bungalow on the corner of my street used to be. I keep getting outsketched by the wrecking ball, honestly. So today I'm going to open the folder, pick one actual house, and paint it. Even if it's terrible. Especially if it's terrible, maybe.

General·Ananya Iyer·1mo

Went back to my old street this morning because I heard they'd started demolition. The house we lived in till I was eighteen is gone already, just a pile of brick and those stupidly bright pink plaster chunks. But the last house at the end, the one with the bougainvillea that always looked like it was on fire, that one's still standing. The family came out and asked what I was doing, and I told them I used to live here. The woman offered me chai and I sat on their steps for an hour sketching the facade across the road. My own childhood home, and I'm drawing it from someone else's porch. The really strange part is how much I remembered wrong. The balcony I was so sure faced the main road, it faces the side lane. The window I thought was mine, wasn't even in our flat. I've been carrying this wrong mental map around for sixteen years and nobody ever corrected it because nobody ever asked. I keep painting these old houses as if I'm documenting them properly, but I can't even remember my own correctly. Maybe that's what the whole project actually is. A record of how unreliable I am. Anyway the chai was good. That house has maybe two weeks left.

Marketing & Social·Ananya Iyer·1mo

The algorithm pushed my old Mysore palace sketch from 2019 to 40k people this week. Four hundred likes on a painting I did sitting on a park bench with wobbly perspective because I was too lazy to walk around to the other side. Meanwhile the piece I spent six weeks on, the one where I measured everything twice and worked the light properly, is sitting at 31 likes. Three. One. I know the answer is supposed to be "just post more, the algorithm is random, consistency consistency." But I've been doing this long enough to notice a pattern now. The stuff that lands is never the stuff I sweated over. It's the throwaway morning sketch, the wobbly bench one, the half-finished thing I almost didn't scan. I don't know what to do with that honestly. Do I keep painting for the craft and accept the algorithm doesn't care? Or do I get smart and start churning out the loose quick ones that perform, and keep the serious work for prints and shows where it actually gets seen properly? Right now I'm doing neither and it's making me a bit cranky. Anyone else found a way to hold both, the work you care about and the work that works?

Studio Life·Ananya Iyer·1mo

There's a construction site visible from my studio window and honestly it's become part of my reference collection whether I like it or not. Two months ago they knocked down this beautiful old bungalow with a veranda and those arched windows, the kind nobody builds anymore. This morning I looked up and the new tower is already at the fourth floor. I've done three sketches of the same view at different stages and I think I'm accidentally documenting the city disappearing in reverse. The workers start at 6am, before the light is even good. I've started timing my chai break to when they break too, mostly because the sound of all that hammering stops and I can finally hear myself think. I keep telling myself I should go draw the older house further down the street before it goes too. But I keep putting it off, same way I keep putting off a lot of things. Maybe that's the real habit to break, na?

Pricing·Ananya Iyer·1mo

I did one of those old Bangalore bungalow portraits for a family that's selling the place. They wanted it as a keepsake before the demolition. I quoted ₹6,000, felt generous about it, honestly, because it was for someone who was losing their childhood home and I wanted to be nice. Eleven hours. That's ₹545 an hour before the paper and the paints, which for good watercolour paper and decent pigment is maybe another ₹800-1000. So call it ₹480 an hour. And I know the family was happy, and I know some of you will say stop undervaluing yourself, and I know all of that is true. But the thing is, I also know if I'd quoted ₹15,000 they'd have found someone else, or gone to one of those digital artists on Instagram who does it for ₹2,000. There's this whole tier of people who genuinely cannot tell my work from the cheap version, and that's the part I don't have a fix for. Still, I did the math on a napkin after I delivered it and sat there for a full minute. I don't even know what the answer is. I just wanted it written down somewhere.

Wins·Ananya Iyer·1mo

There's this old bungalow on Convent Road, the kind with a deep verandah and blue trim and a neem tree that must be a hundred years old. I sketched it first in 2021, just passing by. Did a proper watercolour in 2022. Came back last month and it was still standing, the gate was open so I sat on the steps and painted it again, trying to be faster, looser, less attached maybe. It's gone now. I walked past yesterday and it's just rubble and a JCB parked on top of it. I don't know why I'm posting this in wins except, I caught it three times. That's three more paintings than I'd have if I'd just shrugged and walked past. I keep thinking that's what I'm here for really, just catching things before they disappear. It's not sad exactly. It's what I do.