Pricing·Karen Wessel·22h

So I did the fall craft fair at our church hall last Saturday. Table was $35 for the day, which is why I keep doing it. I had a stack of small 9x12 acrylics, mostly the field and barn scenes I do when I don't have the brain for anything bigger. Priced them at $65 each. Sold four. Felt great until I got home and actually added it up. Eleven hours behind the table plus the framing plus the mats plus the booth fee, and I came out at maybe $9 an hour for work I did over about three months of Sunday afternoons. The thing that gets me is the woman who bought two and said "these are so reasonable." She meant it as a compliment. And I just smiled and said thank you because what am I going to do, argue with her in a church hall? I keep telling myself $65 is what the market here will bear for a small piece. But I've never actually tested that. I've never once put $110 on a painting and seen what happens. I just skip straight to the number that feels safe so nobody walks away from my table. My husband asked why I don't just try it at the spring fair and I didn't have a good answer.

Wins·Karen Wessel·2d

Not a brag, more like I'm suspicious of it. The little 8x10 of the marsh behind the rec center took me four evenings. Usually the same size takes me three weeks because I keep going back in and fussing at the reeds until they turn to mud. This time I laid the block-in on Tuesday, decided it was fine, and left it alone. My husband asked if I'm feeling okay. The thing that changed: I finally stopped trying to paint every single blade of grass and just did the shapes. Big flat shapes, then a few marks, then stop. It looks looser than my stuff normally does and I keep waiting to hate it, but I don't. It's hanging on the fridge right now which my 8 year old thinks is hilarious. So now I'm stuck on what to do with an extra two weeks. Part of me wants to start something bigger and part of me wants to just leave the easel empty for a while and see if the quiet does anything.

Studio Life·Karen Wessel·3d

For two years I painted under the ceiling light in the back room, which is one of those frosted dome fixtures that makes everything look like a faded photo. I kept thinking my greens were muddy. Turns out they were fine, I just couldn't see them. So my husband clamped an old architect lamp to the shelf above the easel, the kind with the long spring arms, and I put a 5000K bulb in it. Night and day. Except now I can see every wobbly edge on the tree line I've been working on since Labor Day and honestly I'm a little insulted. The lamp is doing its job. I'm the problem. Also the kids think the arm looks like a praying mantis and keep bending it around when they come in to say goodnight, so I'm re-aiming it every single night. Small price I guess. Anyone else change one thing in the setup and suddenly get a much harsher look at their own work? I don't know whether to be grateful or go back to the dome light and my comfortable delusions.

Gallery Outreach·Karen Wessel·4d

I keep reading that walking in with work is the bold move and emailing is the safe one, and I honestly can't tell which is true. I'll go first: I emailed. Twice. Got one very polite no and one total silence, and the silence stung more than the no did, weirdly. I've never had the nerve to just show up with a portfolio on a Saturday, partly because I'd have my kids in the car and that's not the vibe I'm going for. So which actually worked for you, the email or the showing up in person? And if you walked in, what time of day did you go? Trying to settle a small argument with myself here.

Rants & Vents·Karen Wessel·5d

Went to the art supply place on my lunch break, 40 minutes I don't really have, to get one tube of burnt sienna. Mine is a sad flat metal corpse, I've been squeezing it with pliers like a crazy person. Guy working there spends ten minutes telling me I should try their house brand instead, it's basically the same pigment, half the price. I said no thanks, I know how the real one behaves when I thin it. He says, and I quote, "they're all made in the same factory." Maybe they are. I still walked out with the expensive one and now I'm annoyed at myself for being the person who pays double for a label, and also annoyed at him for assuming I don't know my own paint. I've been using this color for nine years. I know exactly how it dries and how it looks over a wet sky. Anyway the sky on the piece on my easel is now the right color and I'm still thinking about it at my desk. Guess that tells you something.

Marketing & Social·Karen Wessel·1w

So I finally bought one of those daylight desk lamps everybody in the group swears by, $60 on marketplace, barely used. Set it up Sunday to photograph two small landscapes I want to list before the fall fair. Photos came out flat and slightly blue and honestly the ones I took by the window with my phone propped on a cereal box looked better. I think the problem is I've got it straight on and it's killing all the texture. Everything I read said side lighting and I did not do that. Also my camera is a phone and I refuse to hear otherwise. Anyway if you use one of these, where do you put it. Left, right, higher up, behind a sheet of parchment paper. I have zero patience for a light box setup, I want to hear the lazy version.

Rants & Vents·Karen Wessel·1w

Small betrayal of the day. I left my brushes soaking in the jar on the kitchen counter while I ran the bath and put the kids down, and my 8 year old decided to be helpful and wash them for me. With dish soap. And hot water. And a lot of enthusiasm. So my two best flats are now these sad frizzy things that fan out like a broom. The 1 inch one that finally got a nice edge on it after months. Gone. She was so proud of herself too, standing there with wet sleeves saying "I did them all!" and I had to say thank you and hug her while quietly dying inside. I've been painting with the ugly ones for two days and hating every stroke. And no, I'm not going to be the person who buys another $14 brush when there's a whole jar of them, but I want to.

Wins·Karen Wessel·1w

Our library does a little community show every spring, nothing juried, you just sign up for a 4 foot panel and hang whatever. I'd been planning to put in the marsh piece I did in October, the one that actually came out the way I wanted. I hung two others instead. Both were ones I nearly painted over. A small still life of the kids' cereal bowls from last summer that I hated for months because the light is flat and the left bowl is honestly a little lopsided, and a scrappy plein air thing from the parking lot behind the rink in February where I got the cold sky right and the tree wrong. I don't fully know why. I think I'm tired of only showing the ones that behave. The cereal bowls especially, my 11 year old walked past the table while I was varnishing it and said oh that's the actual morning. Anyway it's up until the 22nd. I keep catching myself wondering if anyone will say anything about them, which is a stupid way to feel about two paintings I almost threw out. The marsh one can go to the fall fair.

Pricing·Karen Wessel·1w

I've been charging $75 for a 9x12 acrylic landscape for about two years now. Small canvas, usually a marsh or a treeline, the kind of thing that sells to somebody's aunt at a fair. Feels like a fair price, people don't blink. Then I did the actual math in the car on the way home Sunday. Canvas and paint maybe $12, frame $18 from the craft store when I catch a sale, and I don't count the varnish or the brushes. So $45 left. That piece was four evenings, probably six hours with drying time and reworking the sky twice. Seven and a half an hour, before I count the drive or the $40 booth fee. I know I'm not going to get $30 an hour at a church craft fair. I'm not trying to. But I sat in my driveway for a minute and thought about how I could just skip the frame and sell it on a panel and keep the $18. The thing is I like the frames. They make it look finished. Anyway, next fair is in October. I'm thinking $95 with the frame and seeing what happens. That's the whole post, I don't have a clean ending for it.

Studio Life·Karen Wessel·1w

I sat down Sunday to do a small still life, apples and a white pitcher, and ended up spending half the time staring at my palette instead of the setup. I've got ultramarine, cerulean, and pthalo on there and honestly I use the pthalo maybe twice a month. It's so strong a dot of it takes over everything. Cerulean is the one I actually reach for in skies but it's $22 a tube now at my local shop and I keep nursing the last squeeze of it like it's medicine. Anyway I did not finish the pitcher. The apples look decent. I'm curious what blues other people keep on the palette, because I feel like I'm carrying dead weight and I can't decide which one to cut.

Rants & Vents·Karen Wessel·1w

So I've been working on this little still life for three weeks. Copper pot, two lemons, a dish towel. Nothing fancy, I just wanted to practice reflective surfaces. Finished it Saturday and hung it in the hallway. Sunday morning in daylight the lemons are basically neon yellow-green. Like highlighter. In my kitchen at night they looked perfect and mellow and now I'm standing in the hallway going, huh. Two of my bulbs are 2700k because that's what was in the house when we moved in, and I never thought about it once in nine years. Now I'm pricing daylight bulbs like it's a home renovation. I know the answer is probably a lamp and not new overheads. But I'm genuinely annoyed at how long I've been mixing color under a light that's lying to me. Eleven year old asked why I was standing in the hallway holding the painting up to the window and I didn't have a good answer.

Studio Life·Karen Wessel·2w

Not a joke. My easel is wedged between the toilet and the tub because the bathroom is the only room in this house with a door that actually latches and no one knocks on it for twenty straight minutes. But here's the thing I figured out last month: the light in the hallway outside it, the little high window over the toilet, that flat afternoon light is the best I've ever had for judging value. My greens stopped going to mud. I did a whole 8x10 of the field behind the elementary school and for once the darks read as darks. So now I have a stool in the shower and a tube of titanium white on the back of the sink and my husband has stopped asking why. Downside is I don't have a bathroom door that stays dry and I've dropped a brush in the toilet twice. Wondering if anyone else ended up working in a room they never planned to. Not looking for the pretty answer either, I want to hear where the easel actually is.

Gallery Outreach·Karen Wessel·2w

Ok so I finally worked up the nerve to walk into a small local gallery last month, the one by the library that I've driven past for years. I had three pieces in the car. Did not bring them in. Instead I stood there for ten minutes pretending to look at a ceramics display and then when the owner came over I said, and I quote, "your lighting is really nice in here." That's it. That was my pitch. Then I bought a $12 card and left. So I want to know: what do you actually SAY? Like the first sentence out of your mouth when you walk in cold. I clearly need a script because my brain goes blank and I start complimenting light fixtures. If you've done it successfully, give me the real words. And if you bombed it, tell me that too, it'll make me feel better 🙂

Artwork Feedback·Karen Wessel·2w

I set up at the little fall fair in town Saturday, which is mostly me and a woman selling goat milk soap and one guy with driftwood lamps. Sold two small ones, so a good day. But I hung everything together for the first time and standing back I could see that every single painting has the exact same green in it. That sap green straight from the tube. The tree line in the field piece, the pears in the still life, the grass, all the same note. Nobody said anything and honestly why would they, but now it's all I can see. I know the answer is mixing your own greens and I know I got lazy because it's a color that works and I have maybe two hours at night. But I don't know how to get out of it without making mud. Every time I try to mix a green from scratch it goes either olive drab or that fake minty blue-green that looks like toothpaste. Want to know the actual fix. Not a video. Like how many greens do you actually keep in rotation, and do you build them on the palette first or just mix as you paint. Also if anyone wants to tell me the goat soap lady's lavender bar is worth nine dollars, it is.

Gallery Outreach·Karen Wessel·2w

Ok I need to hear real numbers because I'm starting to think I'm doing something wrong. I've sent out 9 emails to local galleries and small co-op spaces since February. Heard back from 2. Both no, and honestly one of those was so polite it still stung. The other 7 just... nothing. Crickets. Meanwhile I keep hearing people say "it only takes one yes" and I want to know how many nos that one yes came after. 5? 30? Did anyone here get in on their very first try and just never mention it because it sounds obnoxious? I'm not trying to complain, I genuinely want the real numbers. If the answer is "40 emails and a year" I'd feel a lot better about my 9. If the answer is "2" then I'll go rethink my whole approach. So: how many before your first yes, and how long did it take? Bonus points if you tell me what finally worked. (I'm acrylic, landscapes and still lifes, mostly local fairs so far. If that matters.)

Gallery Outreach·Karen Wessel·2w

Alright, I'll go first and it's a bit embarrassing. A small local gallery near me said they'd love to show my work, then handed me a sheet: I'd pay $250 for the wall space, plus I had to sell 6 pieces minimum or cover the difference. I said thanks and never went back. Now I keep wondering if I was being too proud, but my gut said run. So what's the red flag that made you back out of a gallery? A fee, a weird contract, them asking you to change your style, something with the commission? Give me yours, I want to know what to watch for.

Artwork Feedback·Karen Wessel·2w

So this is a small one, 9x12, a barn at the edge of a field I drive past on the way to my daughter's swim practice. I've painted the roof four times now. I wiped it off twice with a wet rag, scraped once, painted over it once. The problem is I keep making the roof too even. Like tile, when it should read as corrugated metal with rust eating into it. Every time I lay the lines in I make them all the same distance apart and the same value, and it looks like a barcode. My brain knows better and my hand still does it. The thing I'm actually stuck on: do I fight it and keep the corrugation visible, or do I just push the whole roof back into shadow so the eye doesn't go there at all and let the light sit on the field instead? Second option feels like cheating, but I've been on this roof for three evenings after bedtime and I'm starting to resent the painting. Also I'm working with a Mars black I mixed with a little burnt sienna for the rust and it keeps coming out orange in a way that looks like a pumpkin. Might be the paint, might be me.

Studio Life·Karen Wessel·3w

There was a supply vendor at the fall fair near me and I grabbed a single tube of yellow ochre, the cheap student one, because I was out. Two weeks later it's in every single thing on my table. Sky, the dead grass in the field behind the school, the side of the pear I've repainted four times. My husband asked if I was stuck on it and honestly maybe. Anyway I'm painting the same view off the back porch for the third time because it's what I can see while the kids do homework at the kitchen table. 11x14 canvas board, the cheap stuff, so I don't feel bad about wiping it. The 8 year old says the trees look like broccoli and she's not wrong. I'm not sure the ochre is a phase or just what I needed. But I bought two more tubes so I'm committed now.

Studio Life·Karen Wessel·3w

I bought an actual glass palette two years ago. Grey, nice weight, cost more than I want to admit. It lives in the closet now because I ended up using a rimmed aluminum cookie sheet from the dollar store instead. The rim is the whole point. I work wet into wet a lot and the sheet keeps the puddles contained, so I'm not chasing a run of burnt sienna across the table at 10pm. Also it's big enough that I can keep a muddy corner on one end and clean mixes on the other, which I could never do on the glass one. It's stained now. There's a permanent greenish ring in one corner from a mix I made in March and a scratch from where I scraped it with a palette knife instead of being patient. Anyway I have a workshop coming up in two weeks, first one since last fall, and I'm already dreading being the person who shows up with a cookie sheet and a plastic cup for water while everyone else has the nice setup. Then I remember I'm 42 and nobody cares.

Gallery Outreach·Karen Wessel·3w

I'm a hobbyist painter, I do acrylic landscapes and still lifes, and I sell a few pieces at local fairs. There's a small gallery downtown that I've walked past maybe fifty times and I finally want to do something about it. So, do you email first with photos, or just walk in with a folder and hope someone's at the desk? I emailed one place last spring and never heard a word back, which honestly stung more than a no would have. But walking in feels so bold to me. What worked for you the first time?

Gallery Outreach·Karen Wessel·3w

Ok, honest question because I keep going back and forth on this. I've only ever sold at local fairs, but there's a small gallery downtown I'd love to show at someday. I emailed them a couple months ago with a few photos and never heard a thing back. Now I'm wondering if I should've just walked in with my portfolio instead, or if that's just annoying to them. So which is it for you? Do you email first, or do you walk in? And did the one that worked actually feel like a fluke or did you plan it? I'll go first: email, and so far my score is 0 for 1 😅

General·Karen Wessel·3w

I had about 40 minutes after bedtime to get the sky in on this field piece and I mixed what I always mix, ultramarine and a touch of white, that cold early-spring blue. She wandered out for water, looked over my shoulder, and said it looked like the sky in a cartoon. Then she went to bed. So that was helpful. The annoying part is she's not wrong. I've been using the same blue mix for years because it works and I don't have to think about it, and now I can't unsee it. It's flat. It reads like a color I chose instead of a color that was there. So now I'm going down the rabbit hole of warm blues and I'm realizing how much of my palette is just habit. Same three mixes over and over. I've got a tube of cerulean I bought in like 2019 that I've barely touched because it felt "too pretty." Not sure what I'll land on but the sky is going to be worse before it gets better.

Marketing & Social·Karen Wessel·3w

I've been doing the fall craft fair in my town for three years now and I always did the thing where you write "reasonable offers" or just leave the small tags off half of it because I hate the moment someone asks and I have to say a number out loud. This year I priced everything properly. No "DM for pricing." Little handwritten tags on the back of each one with actual numbers. My 8x10s at $65, the 16x20 landscape at $240, and the two I was scared to price at $400. What happened is I sold less. Four pieces instead of the six I moved last year. But I also spent the whole day talking to people about the paintings instead of apologizing for them, and one woman told me the $400 one was worth more than that and I should be charging by size and not by how nervous I am. She didn't buy it. But she was right and now I can't stop thinking about it. The other thing, and this is the part that bugs me. A guy picked up the $240 one, said "nice," put it down, came back twice, and bought it. I don't think he would've come back twice if I'd had a "make me an offer" sign up. Maybe? I don't know. I'm not good at this part. Anyway if you're like me and you price low because it feels rude to ask, that's the conversation I'm having with myself this week.

Gallery Outreach·Karen Wessel·4w

So I finally worked up the nerve and walked into a small local gallery on a Saturday, one of those places with the good light and a woman at a desk who does not look up right away. I had maybe 8 decent photos on my phone and a half-finished thought. She was nice actually. But I stood there scrolling while she waited and I could not stop thinking, this looks so unprofessional, I should have printed something. What do you all do? Actual portfolio book, tablet, or just hand over your phone? I paint acrylics, mostly landscapes, and honestly my phone photos of them are not great either so that's a whole other problem. Someone tell me the phone thing is normal and I'll sleep tonight 🙂

Studio Life·Karen Wessel·4w

Noticed tonight that the middle of my palette is one gray-brown mass that I keep reactivating with water instead of squeezing out anything new. Burnt sienna, ultramarine, a little hansa yellow in there somewhere. It's basically mud with a history. It started because I was trying to stretch paint during the school break, and now it's August and I'm still doing it. Squeezing a fresh blob off the tube feels almost wasteful, like I'm spending money I don't have on a color I could just fake. Which is silly, tubes cost what they cost and I bought them already. But here's the thing I actually noticed. Everything I've painted since spring has the same temperature to it. That grayed-out look. Even the porch light in the painting on my easel right now, which should be warm, has this dead olive cast because I mixed it out of the pile instead of starting clean. So tomorrow I'm scraping the whole thing down to the white. Scraping it, not wet-paper-toweling it. Getting the plastic knife out and everything. I've got a tube of cad yellow light that's been sitting unopened since my birthday in May. The kids go back next week and I'll have my evenings again. That's part of it I think. Hard to start anything new when you're snatching twenty minutes at a time.

General·Karen Wessel·4w

I've got maybe 45 minutes a night to paint, so three tries at the same patch of sky is basically my whole week gone. Working on a marsh scene from a photo I took at a rest stop in Delaware last fall, and the sky there is this washed out gray-blue that's honestly kind of ugly in real life, but in the painting it just turns to mud. Tonight's version is too purple. Tuesday's was too gray. Friday's was closest and I covered it up because I decided it looked unfinished. I keep doing this. I think it's because I only get the short window, so everything has to feel like progress, and a sky that's already right doesn't feel like progress. Anyway I'm leaving tonight's purple disaster on the easel until Sunday so I can look at it with actual eyeballs instead of tired ones. Anyone else paint better in the first pass and then ruin it trying to be careful? Also if you use Liquitex heavy body ultramarine, is yours weirdly glossy straight out of the tube or did I get a bad batch? Might be my medium but I don't think so.

Artwork Feedback·Karen Wessel·4w

So I brought a piece to my local group on Saturday, 16x20 acrylic, marsh grass at low tide with a strip of water in the back. I was actually happy with it, which is rare for me. One of the women there (she's mostly watercolor, does lovely work) said the whole thing sits flat because my grass in the foreground is the same level of detail as the grass way in the back. I'd never thought about it that way. I just painted what I saw, which is that marsh grass looks like marsh grass everywhere. Spent Sunday night going back through my reference photos and, ok, she's not wrong exactly. My close grass is a little crisper but not much. Thing is I don't know if I want to start sharpening foreground blades because I've seen paintings where that gets fussy fast and looks like a photo someone traced. Anyone else run into this? I don't want to spend my one free evening a week redoing a painting that maybe is fine.

Gallery Outreach·Karen Wessel·4w

So this is a small embarrassing thing that happened last month and I want to know I'm not the only one. I dropped off two paintings at a coffee shop that has local art on the walls (that's my level of "gallery" so far, no shame). One sold. The owner then asked if I had more, "the bigger ones," because a customer wanted something similar. I stood there and completely blanked and said "I'll let you know" and then emailed her three days later with a number I basically made up on the spot. I still don't know if it was too high or too low. So my real question: when a gallery or shop or whoever asks you for a price on a piece you've already sold, do you give them the old number, the next number up, or do you just panic like me? I gave her $180 for a 16x20 and honestly I'm still deciding if that was smart or dumb. Tell me your number too. Curious if I'm wildly off.

Wins·Karen Wessel·4w

I'd been fighting this sky for three nights. Big marsh scene, low clouds, and I kept going back over them with more white and more grey and they just got heavier and heavier until they looked like a plate of leftovers. My daughter walks by with a popsicle, looks at it maybe four seconds, and goes "those look like mashed potatoes." Didn't even stop walking. She was right. I'd been painting what I thought clouds look like instead of the ones I actually see out the window. Went out on the porch at 7:40 that night and the real ones had all these warm pinky edges underneath and huge soft gaps of blue showing through, and they were way thinner than what was on my canvas. Repainted the whole sky in about an hour and it finally breathes. Anyway, the kid is now getting a vote on all my skies. Which is going to be annoying and also probably good for me.

Wins·Karen Wessel·1mo

Small thing but it's sitting with me. I had a booth at the spring fair Saturday, the one at the community center with the bad lighting, and I sold the little 8x10 marsh piece. The one with the dead tree. I almost didn't bring it because the water in the foreground never totally worked and I figured someone would notice. Woman bought it for her dad, said it looked like the view from his dock. She didn't say anything about the water. Money was $65 which basically covers the canvas and half a tank of gas. But she texted me a photo Sunday of it hanging in his kitchen next to a calendar and a bowl of keys. I keep looking at that photo. Anyway. I've had a run of pieces that fought me and this was the first one in months that someone just wanted. If you've got a piece you're ashamed of, bring it anyway.