Wins·Ananya Iyer·6h

Small thing compared to some of the wins here, but a man came up to me while I was sketching the old house on Sajjan Rao Circle last Sunday, watched for maybe twenty minutes, and asked if the sheet was for sale. Not "do you teach" or "my cousin also draws" or the usual. For sale. I quoted a number that I made up on the spot and immediately regretted, too low. He paid it in cash and walked off with it under his arm, and I sat there with an empty plastic folder and a pen and felt completely strange about it. Because now somewhere in Basavanagudi there's a stranger's wall with my wobbly verandah railing on it. That house is going to be gone by next year, the compound wall is already marked. I've given away plenty of sketches. This is the first one that went out into the world without me knowing where it landed. Still deciding whether that's nice or unsettling. Anyway. I am going to start quoting higher numbers, that much I've learned.

Artwork Feedback·Ananya Iyer·1d

Something I noticed while sorting old sketchbooks this week: the pages from my architecture days, drawn in a hurry between site visits, are looser and better than anything I've done since I started taking painting seriously. Same hand, same pen. The only difference is that back then nobody was going to look at it. Now I sit down to a fresh page and the line gets careful, and careful is death for ink. I did a corner house in Basavanagudi on Sunday, one of those with the madras-tile roof and the green shutters, and I caught myself going back over a balcony railing to fix it up. Ruined the whole rhythm of it. The railing is now the only neat thing on a page of scribble. I've started doing a throwaway warm-up page before the "real" one, just to get the cautiousness out of my system. Half the time the warm-up is the one worth keeping. Curious whether this happened to anyone else when they went from hobby to calling it their work. Does the seriousness creep into your hand?

Marketing & Social·Ananya Iyer·2d

Bit of an odd one. Last month I got tired of the whole posting schedule thing and did something silly instead. I had 200 small prints made of two sketches, the Russell Market facade and one of those tiled-roof houses off Modi Road, and I dropped a stack at the chai stall near my building, the one I sit at every morning. Stall owner said keep them, charge 150 each, he'd keep 30. Sold 11 in three weeks. One of those people tracked me down and now wants a full watercolour of her grandmother's house in Basavanagudi before it goes for redevelopment. I know it doesn't scale, I know it's not a "strategy." But I have been posting faithfully for a year and a half and the algorithm has given me roughly nothing. A paper stack on a tea counter did more in three weeks than 240 posts. Anyway. Curious whether anyone else has gone back to the physical, offline thing or if I'm just lucky with my chai uncle.

Marketing & Social·Ananya Iyer·3d

Last week I was sketching the inside of a shop off Avenue Road, one of those old ones with the wooden shelves, and I knocked my water cup over. Ruined the whole sheet. I filmed the mess because my cousin had told me to "do reels" and I had nothing better. Put it up with no music, no text, just me saying "ah, gone" and mopping it with my dupatta. It's had more comments than the finished version of that same drawing, which I spent two evenings on. People asking about the paper. Asking what the shop is. Someone from Pune telling me her grandmother's shop looked exactly like that. So my thinking now is that the process is the thing, not the product. Which is annoying, because the process is also where I look most like an idiot. I've made peace with that. The part I'm still not sure about: what do you do when the messy thing does well and the careful thing sits there. Do you just keep leaning into the mess, or does that start feeling like a bit of a performance also. Asking honestly.

Gallery Outreach·Ananya Iyer·5d

I showed my sketchbook to a gallery contact last month, mostly old Bangalore houses and the morning light ones. He flipped through the whole thing very slowly and then said "very nice" and handed it back. Not one question about the work itself. I have never felt so politely dismissed in my life. Tell me I'm reading too much into it. What's the most useful thing a gallery person has actually said to your face? The one line that stayed with you, good or bad. Mine so far is a friend's wife telling me the ink line on one of the roofs was "confident" and I have been dining out on that for weeks.

Marketing & Social·Ananya Iyer·6d

There's a house on Hutchins Road, the pale yellow one with the carved wooden brackets under the balcony, and the board went up last Tuesday. I'd been meaning to draw it for maybe three years. Kept saying next weekend. So I went on Wednesday morning with my book and a flask of chai, fully prepared to be shooed off. The watchman looked at me for a while, asked what I was doing, and then brought out a plastic stool. Two hours. Nobody else came. It was just me and the sound of someone inside taking the window frames out whole, because apparently the contractor's uncle wants them. I've posted maybe forty finished paintings this year. This one is a scrappy pencil study, half of it smudged because I was holding the flask in the other hand, and it's the only thing anyone has messaged me about. Four people asked which house it was. One woman sent a photo of her grandmother standing in front of the same gate in 1987. I don't fully know what to do with that. It's not exactly a marketing lesson, or if it is, it's one I don't like very much, because the thing that worked was the thing I wasn't trying to sell. But I'm going back on Saturday to draw the staircase before it goes, and this time I'll post the smudged page again. Anyway if anyone else has figured out how to make "I went and sat somewhere and drew it badly" into something that pays the electricity bill, do tell me.

Studio Life·Ananya Iyer·1w

Switched to a standing setup about four months back, not for any noble posture reason, purely because the folding table I was using was too low and I was hunched over it like a question mark by 11am. Now I've got the board propped on a broken tripod my husband was going to throw out, clamped at chest height, and I stand there for three hours at a stretch. Yesterday I did a fairly detailed ink study of the old tiled house near my mother's place, the one with the green shutters, and around hour two my lower back started sending me very clear messages. Ignored them, obviously, because the light was going. Today I'm walking like a woman of eighty. The funny part is the standing does help the line work. You loosen up when you can't rest your wrist on anything, you have to commit. But nobody tells you the trade off is that your legs and back enter the conversation. Considering one of those kitchen anti fatigue mats but then I'll be doing full shiatsu on my own feet and it will look ridiculous in here. Anyway. Standing, sitting, some third thing? What actually works for you.

General·Ananya Iyer·1w

The owner of the house I sketched last month called me yesterday. He'd found my number through a mutual friend, wanted to know if I still had the drawing, said the building comes down in March and his mother grew up in it. So now I'm sitting with a scan I made in ten minutes at Malleswaram, one of those old houses with the sloping Mangalore tile roof and the wooden pillars on the verandah, and it suddenly has to be a proper painting. Funny how that works. I've drawn it three times over the years and never once thought of it as important until somebody told me the date. I said yes before I'd thought about what I was promising. I'm not a portrait painter, I don't know how to put a family's feelings into a watercolour. I'm going to do it the way I know, and hope the light on the verandah does the work. Anyone else had a drawing become heavier after the fact? Not the ones we choose. The ones that choose us.

Marketing & Social·Ananya Iyer·1w

Small experiment I ran over the last two months. On the website I had put "prices on request" for the commissioned location sketches. Then in April I just wrote the number down: ₹4,500 for a full day out, roughly six hours, one finished A3 watercolour and ink, plus a couple of pencil studies I throw in anyway. Enquiries halved. Straight away, within a fortnight. But the ones that came through were completely different people. Earlier I'd get eight messages asking for a "quick sketch" of a wedding venue or a house before demolition, and half of them would vanish the moment I mentioned any money at all. Now it's fewer people, and they turn up knowing what it costs, and we spend the conversation on the actual thing. Which lane the morning light comes in from, whether they want the whole elevation or just the gate and the old neem tree. Real conversation. So the number went down and the work went up in quality. I'm still not sure if halving my enquiries is a win, and I keep second-guessing whether ₹4,500 is too low for a full day plus travel across the city. Anyone else here put a real number up instead of "DM for pricing"? Did it scare off the right people or just everyone?

Studio Life·Ananya Iyer·1w

Went out to Shivajinagar early this morning to catch the light on a row of old houses near the market, the kind with the wooden balconies and the faded blue shutters. Set up my stool on the footpath, chai in one hand, book in the other. Drew for about ninety minutes and did not notice that I was pressing hard with my 0.3 fineliner. By the time I packed up, the nib was flat. Completely flat, like a chisel gone wrong. I know it is a two hundred rupee pen and I can buy another one on the way home. But this one had drawn maybe forty buildings. It had a slight bend I had learned to work with, a little skip on the upstrokes that honestly gave the ink work some character. You build a relationship with a nib and then you murder it by being greedy with the pressure. So now I am rationing it. Using it only for the final architectural lines, letting the 0.5 do the foliage and the loose stuff. Which is the correct practice anyway, and which I will abandon the moment I am in a hurry again. Anyone else keep a dead tool long past its use? Or is it just me and my sentimentality about stationery.

Gallery Outreach·Ananya Iyer·1w

Genuine question because I keep going back and forth on this. My first (and so far only) gallery thing happened because I was sitting outside sketching a house on Lavelle Road, and the gallery owner two doors down came out with his coffee and asked what I was doing. Two months later my work was on his wall for a group show. So I never actually had to approach anyone, and now I have no idea how to do it properly. Which means I've been circling three other galleries for a year now, politely, from a distance, like a coward. So, what worked for you? Did you send the email with the PDF and the polite paragraph, or did you just walk in with a folder under your arm and ask? And if you walked in, what did you say? I keep imagining myself standing there saying something deeply stupid. Tell me your actual first move, even if it was messy.

Studio Life·Ananya Iyer·2w

Not a boast, just an observation. I have this old Horlicks bottle, glass, thick bottom, that I use for rinsing. Normally I tip it out after every session, that's the rule I set for myself after the first time I left it and came back to a jar of something alive. Three weeks ago I forgot. Now I can't bring it on myself to throw it away, because the water has gone this dull grey-green that is honestly a better sky colour than anything in my box, and the sediment at the bottom settles into three separate bands if I leave it overnight. I keep tilting the bottle to look at it. I have painted exactly nothing this week. Meanwhile there is a house on 8th Main that I have been meaning to sketch since June. It's one of those old tiled-roof ones with the red oxide floor and a tulsi plant in a cement pot on the parapet, and the family has already put up the board. Some builder's name, gold letters, "coming soon." I walked past it this morning with my bag on my shoulder and just stood there like an idiot, and then went and got chai instead. I will draw it tomorrow. I have said this before.

Gallery Outreach·Ananya Iyer·2w

I'll start. Went to see a small space near Infantry Road last month, the owner was lovely, the walls were lovely. Then he mentioned that unsold work "stays with us" past a certain date and he couldn't quite tell me on what terms. Nothing rude about it at all. I still finished my chai and left with a polite email. Maybe I read too much into it. But something about a gallery that won't put commission and storage in writing, in the first meeting, without me asking twice. What's the thing that made you back out? Not the obvious disasters, the small one that just didn't sit right.

General·Ananya Iyer·2w

I went back this morning to finish a sketch of an old tiled house near Yelahanka, one of those with the sloping Mangalore roof and the little parapet with the dented bits. Painted it twice already this year. This time there's a grey compound wall up, tin sheet and a board for a 3BHK project, and the jackfruit tree that used to lean over the wall is just gone. Not cut and lying there. Gone. So I sat on the opposite side and drew the wall itself, which felt slightly ridiculous. An hour of work on a blank slab. But the light was doing that thing at 8am where everything is gold and wet, and there was a man washing his scooter next to me who kept asking if I was from the paper. I don't know what the point of this is. I keep painting buildings that won't be there, and people keep telling me the paintings are nice, and I keep wanting to say the painting is not the point. Anyway. Anyone else draw something that was already gone by the time the paint dried?

Studio Life·Ananya Iyer·2w

I bought my drawing table second-hand in 2014 from a man in Rajajinagar who was closing his signboard shop. Teak, solid, one drawer that sticks in the monsoon. It has his pencil marks all over it. Layout lines, a few measurements, half a word I can't read. He clearly worked straight on the tabletop for years. I've had it cleaned, oiled, thought about sanding it smooth twice. Never done it. Those marks are the only reason I keep the table. Thing is, I've started leaving my own on it. Not deliberately. Just the small smudges where I test a nib, the outline of a 9x12 block traced so I stop placing it crooked. There's a coffee ring from last Tuesday that I'm pretending is a design decision. Anyway. Some mornings I sit down and see his lines under mine and it feels like working next to someone. Which is odd because I never met him and he was probably only tolerating me while I counted out the cash. I don't know what I'm asking. Maybe just curious if anyone else has a piece of furniture they bought used and can't quite bring themselves to properly own.

Marketing & Social·Ananya Iyer·2w

Small experiment the last three weeks. Along with the finished piece, I post a shot of the blank sheet, taped to my board, pencil grid barely visible, chai cup in the corner. No caption, no before/after, just the empty paper. Engagement is roughly double the finished paintings. Same people who scroll past a finished sketch of a Malleswaram house will stop and stare at a damp sheet of Arches. I have no idea what to do with this. On one hand it's lovely, people are curious about process. On the other, I spent eleven years learning to see and people want to look at the tape. My sister said it's because everyone can imagine themselves starting something, and nobody can imagine themselves finishing it. That stung a bit because I think she's right. So now I'm sitting here wondering whether I keep doing it, because it works, or stop, because it feels like I'm selling the idea of painting rather than the painting. Anyone else had a thing that performs well but sits oddly with them?

Studio Life·Ananya Iyer·2w

My water jar is a plastic bucket from a bakery near my old office. Two rupees, no lid. Someone had scratched "Bindu" into the side with a compass point. I have never met Bindu and I am weirdly attached to her. Here is the actual thing though. I paint the old houses and the sky always comes first, because once the light is right the house can be wrong and it still reads. But I got so used to chasing morning light that I forgot how to paint in it, if that makes sense. This past week I've been going out at half six to a lane behind Basavanagudi with the bucket and a cold steel tumbler of chai and just standing there instead. Twice I came back with nothing painted and did not feel bad about it. Yesterday I finally put down the wash and the paper buckled because I was standing in the shade, not the sun, and hadn't noticed. All that looking and I still got the direction of light wrong. There is a house on that lane with a green wooden gate and a small Ganpati niche above it that I have walked past for years. Scaffolding went up on it on Tuesday. I don't know if it's a repair or the end. I am telling myself repair. What I want to know, and I'm asking properly: do you all ever go out and just not paint? Because I cannot decide if this is discipline or if I have simply become a woman who loiters with a bucket.

Studio Life·Ananya Iyer·3w

Somewhere along the way I stopped sitting down to paint and I didn't notice until my husband asked why I was hovering over the table like a waiter. It's a drafting habit I never shook off. Architect for eight years, you stand at the board, you step back, you come close, you step back again. Sitting makes me commit too early. Standing, I keep moving, and somehow the line stays looser, which is exactly what I'm trying to learn. My colour work is stiff enough as it is. Downside is the knees. Forty minutes in, A4 old house near Basavanagudi, and I'm shifting weight like a bored horse. Managed to knock over my water jar twice yesterday. The second time it went over a half finished sketch of a tiled roof and honestly the smear looked better than what I'd painted. Do any of you work standing? Or is this just me refusing to grow up about furniture.

Wins·Ananya Iyer·3w

Small thing, but it took me two months to work up to it. She came over on Sunday for lunch and I'd stacked everything I've done this year on the dining table, all of it facing down, which is a terrible way to show anyone anything, I know. Twelve sheets. Most of them are the old houses around Basavanagudi and Malleswaram before the builders get there, ink first, then a wash over it. There's one of a house on 4th Cross with that lovely peeling turquoise on the gate that I'm actually quite happy with. She went through the whole stack properly, which I didn't expect. Then she said, very gently, "these are all so old and broken. Can you also do nice ones? Some flowers? Something bright for the wall." And the thing is, she was being kind. She wasn't being dismissive. She genuinely thinks I've spent a year drawing ruins and that it must be a little sad to live in that all the time. I've been turning it over since. Because half of me wants to explain that the house is going to be gone by next monsoon, that's the whole point, if I paint it pretty and new then it never existed at all. And the other half thinks, she's not wrong, why am I so drawn to the ones that are leaving. Anyway. She took the turquoise gate one home with her. No explanation available for that.

General·Ananya Iyer·3w

I got a message from a friend on Tuesday morning, a photo actually. The old house on 4th Cross, the one with the red oxide floor and the wooden balcony with the turned railing posts. Gone. Just the compound wall and a pile of rubble and two men sitting on it having tea. I have eleven sketches of that house. Eleven. From different angles, different mornings, different light. And I still felt like I hadn't really looked at it. That's the thing that gets me. I could draw a building a hundred times and still not be sure I actually saw it, and then one day it's a pile and the sketches are all I have and some of them are wrong. The proportions off, the balcony too high, the shadow in the wrong place. When I was an architect I used to draw buildings so they could be built. Now I draw them so they can be remembered and honestly I'm not sure I'm any better at it. Different job, same feeling of missing something. Not looking for advice on this one. Just wanted to say it out loud somewhere. Tuesday was a bad day.

Studio Life·Ananya Iyer·3w

For two years I've painted sitting on a dining chair. Solid teak, my mother-in-law's spare, the kind that's built for a forty-minute meal and not a four-hour session. I keep a folded bedsheet on it for cushioning and I keep telling myself I'll get a proper stool. I have told myself this since 2023. The thing is, when I stand up after a long sitting my lower back is finished, and I've started noticing it in my line work. Ink lines get shorter. I stop reaching across the sheet. The drawing quietly shrinks to what's comfortable from one position, which for an urban sketcher is death, because the whole point is the long confident line that goes where it wants. Friend who does oils told me to just get a draughtsman's chair, the ones with the footring, and I looked at the prices and went quiet. So now I'm doing the classic thing of researching it thoroughly for months while continuing to paint on a chair meant for eating rice and sambar. Curious what everyone else is actually sitting on. Not the aspirational studio tour version, the real one.

Studio Life·Ananya Iyer·3w

The new pad is sitting there, still in its plastic, propped against the wall behind my table. Cotton, cold pressed, the good one. I bought it as a reward after finishing the Malleswaram house series and I have not touched it. Meanwhile I'm on the last four sheets of the old pad that buckles if I go past three washes, and I keep working around the buckle like it's a personality trait. There's something about the first sheet of a new pad. Once you ruin one, the pad is ruined, it's an ordinary pad. So it stays wrapped. My husband asked why I don't just open it and I gave him some answer about paper needing to acclimatise to Bangalore humidity, which is not a real thing I have ever read anywhere. Anyway. Morning light on the terrace was very good today, that flat white before seven, and I did a quick ink of the water tank and the neighbour's clothesline. On the buckling paper. Naturally.

Marketing & Social·Ananya Iyer·4w

So I've been trying to film my sketching, because everyone says video is the thing now. Spent most of a Sunday on one: tripod, phone clamped to the easel, painted a house on 8th Cross while the light was going, then cut it into a 40-second reel with the brush sounds and all. Took me close to three hours start to finish. It got 900 views and zero enquiries. I was ready to give up on the whole format. Then last Thursday I was out at Malleswaram, half-finished sketch of an old tiled roof, and I filmed maybe 20 seconds by accident, phone just propped on my chai glass. No edit. You can hear a scooter and someone's pressure cooker going off. Posted it without thinking. Two commissions off that one, one from a woman in Jayanagar who said the noise was the reason she stopped scrolling. I don't know what to do with this information honestly. I can't fake the messy ones on purpose, that's the entire problem. And I'm not going back to three-hour edits. Also my hands look old in close-up and I've made peace with that.

Marketing & Social·Ananya Iyer·4w

The house is on a small lane off 8th Main, the kind with a red oxide floor and a wooden stair that announces every person who's ever climbed it. I've drawn it maybe five times now, early mornings mostly, since I pass it on my walk and the light hits the balcony grille in a way I don't know how to describe properly. Did a watercolour of it two weeks ago and put it up, no caption, nothing clever. A man messaged asking what the price was, then bought it and told me he's the owner's son and they've given the builder the go ahead, demolition is in March. He said he wanted the painting because he's the only one in the family who remembers the house and he lives in Whitefield now. I was pleased about the sale for about ten minutes. Then I just sat there with my tea feeling strange. There's a real question underneath this that I keep circling. Am I documenting the city, or am I making nice pictures out of other people's grief and then charging for them? Because the sale is money and the money is what lets me keep doing this at all, so I'm not going to pretend I wish I'd refused. No neat answer here. Mostly I've realised I don't want to sell any more of these to strangers who just like "old Bangalore" as a look. I want them to go to people who'll actually miss the thing. That probably means less money. Fine.

Gallery Outreach·Ananya Iyer·4w

I'll go first. Walked into one place last year, lovely old building, and the owner spent the first ten minutes talking about how he "discovers" artists and how lucky they are. Never once asked to see what I'd brought. I left in twenty minutes, portfolio untouched. The folder is still wrapped in the same plastic at home. So what's the thing that made you quietly pick up your work and walk out? Or the line that made you think, no, not this one. Tell me yours. I want to feel less alone in my red flag radar.

Wins·Ananya Iyer·4w

Small thing, but it's been sitting with me all week. I've been sketching at the old market near Avenue Road for months now. Same three vegetable sellers, same crates, same blue tarpaulin. And every single time someone walks into my frame I do the same cowardly thing: I look down, wait, and hope they move off. Which means three years of urban sketching and my sketchbooks are full of beautiful empty streets that don't exist. Anyway, Thursday I just drew the man. Sat down on the low stone step, ink first like always, and instead of waiting I just caught him where he was, mid-argument with the auto driver about parking. Took maybe forty seconds. His shoulders are slightly wrong and I gave him one leg too many folds in the lungi, but he's there. He's in the drawing. The odd part is the whole page came alive after that. The crates stopped being an exercise in perspective and started being a place where something happened. I don't know why it took me this long. I think some part of me was treating people as interruption rather than as the actual subject. Architect habit maybe, buildings don't fidget. Anyone else here guilty of the empty-street sketchbook? Or is it just me being a coward with a pen 🙏

Pricing·Ananya Iyer·4w

I need to say this somewhere. Two years back, a friend's sister asked me to do a sketch of their old house in Basavanagudi, the one with the red oxide floor and the wooden pillars, before the builder came in. I said 6,000. Family-adjacent rate, I told myself. She was thrilled, paid half upfront without a word. It took nine days. Ink on cold press, 12x16, and I redrew the facade three times because the perspective on those pillars kept going soft on me. Fine. That's my problem, not hers. But then came the framing. I wanted it to look good for them, so I got it mounted and framed properly. 2,800. And the drive to and fro, two trips with samples, another 600 in autos. So 6,000 minus 2,800 minus 600. Plus paint, paper, my own time. I did the arithmetic that night and just sat there. The thing is, I have not raised my rate since. Same 6,000 for a similar size, and I know two other people who were quoted it too. It has become THE number. I'm scared to touch it because they all know each other. The house is gone now, by the way. Demolished last March. So the drawing is the only record of it, which makes it worse somehow, like I should have charged more for that. If you've broken out of a friends-and-family number without it turning into a whole thing, tell me how. I genuinely want to know. 🙏

Gallery Outreach·Ananya Iyer·1mo

My first proper gallery meeting here, the man was perfectly nice on email, and then I reached the place and he walked me through his own kitchen to get to the "gallery space." Which was one room at the back of the house. I still showed him my sketchbook, still said yes when he offered a wall. Lasted one show and I spent six weeks chasing him for the two paintings that sold. I've got better at reading it now, but I want to know what yours was. The sign you saw and ignored because you wanted it too much. Mine was the kitchen. Tell me something worse so I feel better about it, na? 🙂

General·Ananya Iyer·1mo

I've been drawing a house on 8th cross for nearly two years now. Old Mysore-style place, red oxide floor visible through the gate, a jasmine creeper that had climbed up past the window and gone on to the roof. I must have four or five sketches of it by now, different lights, different days. This morning they brought the machine in. I went with my book and my box, sat on the opposite kerb like an idiot, and did not open either. Just watched. The whole thing was down by about eleven, and the creeper went first, which I hadn't expected and which was somehow the worst part. What I keep circling back to is this: my drawings are careful. They're accurate, the perspective is right, I know that house better than most people who lived near it. And not one of them is from the day it actually went. I have all the before and nothing of the during. I don't think that's a failure exactly. I don't know what it is. But I've been sitting with my tea for an hour now and it's the only thing on my mind.

Gallery Outreach·Ananya Iyer·1mo

I'll go first since it's only fair. There's a tailoring shop near my old neighbourhood in Malleshwarigalli side, the owner had this long blank wall above the folding table and he was tired of looking at it. I used to sketch outside his shop most mornings, we'd got friendly, and one day he just asked if I wanted to hang some of the old house paintings there. Not a gallery, not a sale, just a wall. But it was the first time anyone asked, and I said yes before he finished the sentence. Two of them are still there. He refuses to take them down even though the wall's due for repainting. So, how did yours happen? The proper way, the accidental way, the mortifying way, all welcome. Was it a cold email, a friend of a friend, an open call you nearly didn't send, a walk-in that went badly or surprisingly well? I want to know the actual story, not the advice version. And tell me the truth about the first one. Did you sell anything, or did you just stand there beaming at your own frames?