Wins·Kasia Nowak·8h

Found a scan from 2014 today, first pastel portrait I ever attempted. Same subject, same reference photo I keep coming back to because I'm stubborn. Put mine from last week next to it. The old one is so bad. I remember being proud of it when I finished. I remember thinking this is it, this is what I can do. And ten years later I can see every single thing wrong with it and I still kept trying the same face over and over until it finally came close to what I saw in my head. I think the win is not the new one. The win is that I didn't stop in 2015 when I should have, or 2018, or honestly last January when I nearly quit pastel for good. Nobody told me to keep going, I had to decide it myself, weeks at a time. And it worked out in a way I couldn't see from inside the bad years. Anyway. Old me would be so confused that the face in the picture is the same and everything else is different. 🙃

Pricing·Kasia Nowak·1d

Finally worked up the nerve to raise my portrait rate. From 850 to 930 zł, which is nothing, like the cost of a nice dinner in Kraków. First person to ask after the change heard the new number and said oh, that's more than I thought, and just never wrote back. And the stupid part is I knew exactly what I was doing. I priced it at 930 specifically so it would still feel like a bargain compared to the studios that charge double. And I still felt like I'd done something rude. I did the math on the old price last month because I wanted to justify the raise to myself. 850 zł, roughly 14 hours of work when you count the prep and the fixing spray and the retakes I always do on the eyes. That's about 60 zł an hour. Less than I made answering emails at my old office job. Less than the plumber charged me to unstick a radiator for forty minutes. So logically I know I was right. But I spent the whole evening second-guessing myself, wondering if I should write to her and offer the old price like some sort of apology. Didn't. Woke up annoyed at myself either way. I keep seeing people on here talk about their real numbers and it genuinely helps. So here's mine and I'm not proud of it: I'll probably still say yes to anyone who asks nicely, at whatever they want to pay, because I can't stand the quiet after a no.

Gallery Outreach·Kasia Nowak·2d

I emailed for months and got nothing but silence or the polite we'll keep you in mind. Then one afternoon I just walked into a small gallery here in Kraków with a folder of prints and asked if anyone had ten minutes to look. The owner was so surprised she actually laughed at me, but she looked. Nothing came of it in the end, but it was the only real conversation I ever got. So I'm wondering now, who here emails and who just walks in? And for those who did walk in, did it ever actually lead anywhere or was it always just a nice chat that went nowhere? I keep thinking I should try it again but I'm not sure I have the nerve a second time 🙂

Marketing & Social·Kasia Nowak·3d

I posted a portrait of my aunt last week, the one where I never quite fixed the jaw, and I almost didn't put it up because of that jaw. Caption just said it was my aunt in 1987 from a blurry photo. And people keep writing "this is so honest." Which is nice, I think? But also I didn't mean it to be honest, I meant it to be correct and it wasn't. So does the thing I was embarrassed about read as a feature to everyone else? That's a strange loop to be stuck in. Makes me wonder how many pieces I've called failures that someone else would have called finished.

Gallery Outreach·Kasia Nowak·5d

I sent a portfolio to a small gallery last spring and heard nothing. Fine, I thought, that's normal. Then nothing for months. I had honestly written it off, told myself my work just wasn't for them, maybe wasn't for anyone. Eight months later I get an email, warm as anything, "lovely to hear from you, we'd love to see more." No apology, no explanation. Like we'd been mid-conversation the whole time. I didn't know whether to be thrilled or annoyed. I replied anyway, obviously, because I'm a glutton for it. 😅 What's the longest you've waited? And did the reply, when it finally came, feel worth it or did it just make you mad all over again?

Rants & Vents·Kasia Nowak·6d

My daylight lamp gave up after seven years, the one I've matched every colour against. So today I went to the shop and the only full-spectrum option they had was an LED panel that hums and makes everything look slightly blue-green. I tried to match a skin tone I've mixed a hundred times and it came out wrong, muddy, like a bruise. I know it's just a lamp. I know. But I sat there for about twenty minutes convinced I've forgotten how to paint, that all those years of doing this were a fluke and now the one lamp that knew me is gone. Then I remembered I'd left the blinds open and there was actual sun coming in, so the whole panic was literally just bad lighting. Still painted the whole afternoon under the hum anyway because I'd already dragged the thing up the stairs and I'm stubborn. Anyone else have one piece of kit that's basically furniture now and the thought of replacing it is worse than the actual replacement?

General·Kasia Nowak·1w

I ran out of my usual Mi-Teintes mid-week and didn't feel like going into town, so I grabbed the cheapest pastel paper the shop had, the generic school kind, the one I used to look down on a little. Some hard gritty thing that grabs every layer and won't let go. And you know what, it's kind of wonderful. The tooth is so aggressive you can't over-blend, it stops me from smearing everything into that same soft mush I always fall into when I'm nervous. It forces me to commit to each mark because you can't really fix it once it's down. Ten euros for a whole ream instead of the price of one decent pad. I did a small portrait of my partner on it last night and the roughness actually suits him, his face is all angles and stubble, and I keep staring at it wondering why I never tried this before. Might be a phase, might be that I finally learned that the expensive stuff was just making me lazy. Anyway, I think I'll keep the ugly paper around. Does anyone else keep a cheap paper they reach for when the good stuff makes you feel too precious to touch? Or am I alone in this weirdness. 🙂

Wins·Kasia Nowak·1w

This one old man in a market, reference photo I took last summer and kept coming back to. Drew him maybe seven times this month, every attempt slightly better and still wrong. The eyes kept coming out too open, too kind. He's not kind, you can see it in the real photo. He's worn. Yesterday I stopped trying so hard. Smudged the whole left side of the face down with my finger without thinking and then worked back from the mess. And it just. Was him. Not my version of him, him. I almost didn't post it because I still don't trust that feeling when something clicks. Like it's a fluke and tomorrow I won't remember how I got there. But I liked it. That's the win, I think, that I liked it before I started picking it apart.

Studio Life·Kasia Nowak·1w

Spent three hours today on a single portrait eye, on this warm gray paper I've been hoarding. Not the whole face, just one eye. I kept getting the lower lid wrong, it's always the lower lid for me, so I'd scrape it back with a kneaded eraser and start over. Twice I redrew the whole thing after I had it nearly right because the pupil sat two millimeters too high and I couldn't let it go. The funny part is nobody would ever notice. I mean it's a good eye now, I'll keep it, but the effort to payoff ratio was criminal. My partner came in and said something like "looks the same as an hour ago" which is fair and also exactly the wrong thing to say to me. I wonder if other people have a part like that, one little thing that eats all the time. Mine is lower lids. And ears, but ears I just avoid. The constant redoing isn't even about perfection, it's that I can see what it's supposed to be and the distance between that and my hand makes me crazy until it closes. Anyway the portrait is still missing its other eye so tomorrow I get to do this all again. Wish I could say I learn from it but I think the redrawing IS the learning, just slow and expensive.

Gallery Outreach·Kasia Nowak·1w

I got asked by a small local place last autumn, off a piece I posted online, and I was so sure it was a joke I almost didn't reply. I said yes, obviously, and then spent the whole week panicking I'd embarrass myself with bad framing. But it got me thinking, the artists I know who've been in galleries, almost all of them got a no before the yes. Some of them three or four no's. Nobody talks about that part, the no's. So, real question: how many no's did you get before your first gallery said yes? Or, if you're still waiting on your first one, what's the closest you've come?

Marketing & Social·Kasia Nowak·1w

Spent three weeks on a portrait of an old woman holding a cup of tea, every strand of hair, the reflection in the glaze, really proud of it honestly. Posted it, 140 likes. Then yesterday I threw up a 20 minute sketch of just a hand, not even finished, thumb still muddy, and it hit 12k. I don't understand this platform at all. The frustrating thing is I know exactly why. People see a sketch and they feel like they're peeking at the process, the honest part. The finished piece is intimidating, it's closed. The sketch is open. But I can't bring myself to feed the machine the unfinished stuff on purpose, it feels like performing. Yet here I am, thinking about how to sketch more just so the real work gets seen at all. Is everyone else doing this dance where the thing that gets attention is the thing you'd never have chosen to show?

Marketing & Social·Kasia Nowak·1w

Raised my prices two months ago. Not by much, from 350 to 450 for a portrait. I had this whole spreadsheet argument with myself about it. The logic was fine. Someone actually bought one at the new price last week and I still felt guilty about it, like I'd overcharged a friend. But here's the thing nobody warns you about. The silence. Before, I'd post a finished portrait and get the usual little hum of interest. Now I post the same quality work and it's just... quiet. I know it's partly the season and partly the algorithm being moody. But I can't shake the feeling that the quiet is people deciding 450 is too much. The other part of me, the part I'm trying to trust more, says it's just that higher prices filter out the people who were never going to pay anyway. One buyer who treats it as a real purchase beats ten people who say "oh I love your work" and mean it as a compliment to themselves. I don't know. I keep going back and forth. Any of you who've raised prices and sat through that quiet stretch before it paid off, tell me it got better. Or tell me you dropped back down and it was the right call. I need someone else's spreadsheet.

Gallery Outreach·Kasia Nowak·2w

I've got one so far and it was so bad I still think about it years later. Owner told me, straight face, that pastel "isn't a serious medium" and maybe I should "try oils if I wanted to be taken seriously." I just stood there and then left. Didn't even say goodbye, which is not like me at all. What's the worst thing someone in a gallery has said to your face? The one that made you want to just turn around and leave. I need to know I'm not the only one who's done it 🙂

Artwork Feedback·Kasia Nowak·2w

I finished a pastel portrait of my partner's aunt last night, the one I'd been fighting with for a week. Her eyes finally came out right, that grey-green that shifts, and I felt good about it for maybe four hours. This morning I walked past it and the jaw is wrong, the whole left side of the face is too heavy, and I can't see the thing I saw yesterday at all. It's not even a bad portrait. I know that. But I keep catching it out of the corner of my eye and going no, that's not her, that's not anyone. Is this just what it is with pastel, where the fix is never done because you can always add one more layer on top of the one before it? Or do other people also go through the same cycle of loving a piece at night and distrusting it in daylight? I genuinely can't tell if it's the light changing or my brain deciding to lie to me on a schedule.

Marketing & Social·Kasia Nowak·2w

Instagram keeps nudging me toward Reels. Like literally, the app is begging. But pastel portraits are slow, they take hours, there's nothing to film. I tried once, filming my hand smudging for 15 seconds, and it felt so fake. Like I was performing the process instead of doing it. Meanwhile the still photos of finished faces get a fraction of the reach they used to get, even two years ago. I know the algorithm wants engagement and watching a hand move gets more of it. But I don't want to become a person who makes content. I want to be a person who makes pictures and posts them when they're done. I keep going back and forth on it. Is this stubbornness going to cost me? Or is everyone else just exhausted and the boring photo accounts actually feel like a relief now? Curious what other slow-medium artists are doing about it, because the advice online is all "post 3 times a day" and I cannot imagine having that many finished things even in a month.

Studio Life·Kasia Nowak·2w

I have this rag I wipe pastel dust off my fingers with. It used to be a t-shirt I wore in my office job, before I quit. Every portrait I've ever done has left a bit of itself on it, layers of pigment so thick in places it's more like a painting than a rag. My partner keeps offering to throw it in the wash and I keep saying no, and I can't really explain why. It's not sentimental, it's not like I hold onto a shirt for the memories. It's just that the color buildup is a record. I can look at it and see the last two years of faces, all smeared together into one brownish mess that's somehow more honest than the finished pieces. Today I held it up to the light and there was a patch of that exact pink I mixed eleven times for one portrait and never got right. The rag got it in the end. Maybe I should frame the rag instead of the drawings.

Gallery Outreach·Kasia Nowak·2w

I'll go first. A gallery in Warsaw turned me down years ago and just said "your colours are muddy, you're afraid of the dark tones." I was offended for a week. Then I looked at my pastels and... yeah. She was right. I've pushed my darks way further since and it's the biggest change in my work. So what about you, what rejection or harsh word turned out to be the thing you needed to hear? Or did one ever just flatten you and stay unfair?

Pricing·Kasia Nowak·2w

Did a portrait for a friend's parents' anniversary. They're lovely people, I've known them since I was a kid, so I said 300 zloty and waved off the rest. It took me eleven sittings' worth of work across two weeks and I kept redoing the mother's eyes until I got them right. The friend was happy, the parents were happy, nobody complained once. And I still spent the whole time feeling like I owed them an apology for taking their money at all. 300 zloty for that much work is brutal if you do the arithmetic, which I did, standing in my kitchen at midnight like an idiot. The weird part is my friend's husband actually does photography and charges proper money for it. Nobody thinks twice about his rates. But I hand someone a portrait I sweated over and I want to refund them for being inconvenienced.

Wins·Kasia Nowak·3w

I've been fighting the same portrait for two weeks now. Same face, and every time I got the eyes right the nose went wrong, or the mouth slid off, and I kept telling myself this is how it goes, you fix one thing and break another. Today I stopped trying to fix it. I put the reference down, walked away for an hour, came back and just worked the pastel the way it wanted instead of the way I was forcing it. And the nose sat. Just... sat. In the right place, right value, everything. I almost didn't pick it back up today. That's the part that gets me. Closest I came to giving up on it, and then it was one sitting away. My hands are still covered in pigment dust and I keep glancing at it like it might crawl off the paper. Probably not actually good, but I don't care right now. It's the first time all week I've believed I could do this. I wanted to tell someone who'd get it. 🙂

Artwork Feedback·Kasia Nowak·3w

I spent three evenings on the nose alone for a portrait and it still looks wrong from across the room. Up close it's fine, the values are there, the highlight is where it should be. Step back and suddenly it's a mouth. I don't understand how my eye can be so careful for six hours and then betray me at the one distance that matters. I think my problem is I keep drawing what I know a nose is instead of what the light is actually doing on this particular face. I get attached to the idea of it. Has anyone else hit this, where a feature is technically correct but it just doesn't sit right in the whole? Do you fight it by redoing the whole passage or do you walk away and come back with fresh eyes? I'm tempted to leave this one overnight and see if I even still recognise it in the morning.

General·Kasia Nowak·3w

I started signing the front of my pastels again. For years I only signed the back, because signing the front felt like announcing myself, like saying "this is good enough that I stake my name on it." And I wasn't sure it was. But I was going through old pieces this week and I found a portrait from two years ago that I'd forgotten, and it was... actually good? Not perfect, one eye sits a little high, but there was a life in it I don't think I could fake. And it's unsigned on the front, just a pencil note on the back, and it made me sad. Like I'd hidden the thing that made it mine. So now I sign the front of everything I manage to finish. Small, in the corner, soft pastel or pencil depending on the paper. My name, in my bad handwriting, which I've decided I'm allowed to have. It's a tiny thing but it feels like stepping out from behind something.

Marketing & Social·Kasia Nowak·3w

Scanned a pastel this week that I nearly didn't bother with. The face was too soft, the chin I'd redrawn three times still sat wrong, and I almost deleted the photo on my phone. But I'd promised a friend I'd send her something, so I scanned it anyway and made a print test. It's the first thing that's sold twice in two days. Small A5 edition, €18 each, and both buyers DM'd the same thing, "the quiet one." The one I thought was a failure. I keep having this happen and I don't know what to do with it. My eye is ruthless and probably wrong. The pieces I'm proud of sit there, the ones I want to bury get attention. Is it that people feel the struggle in a piece? Or is my judgment just genuinely off about what works? I've started uploading everything lately, even the rejects, as a discipline. It's not a strategy, it's me not trusting myself less. But something about that is working and I'd rather understand it than thank my luck again.

Gallery Outreach·Kasia Nowak·3w

This is probably a niche one but has anyone had a gallery show interest, say all the right things, and then just... go quiet? Not a no, not a contract, just silence. I had one earlier this year. Owner loved the work, talked about a slot in autumn, asked me to send more photos. I sent them. And then nothing. I followed up once, politely, and nothing again. I still don't know if I did something wrong or they just got busy or what. It honestly stuck in my head more than any straight rejection would have. At least a no you can file away. Anyone else? And did you chase it or let it go?

Marketing & Social·Kasia Nowak·3w

I posted a portrait at the end of January. Knew it was one of the better ones, the kind where you finish and step back and for once you're not picking at it. And it just... sat there. Two months of near silence. Fewer likes than a half-finished sketch I threw up to remind myself I still existed. Then last week someone messaged me asking if it was still available. She'd found it through a tag, not the feed. Said she'd saved it weeks ago and kept coming back to it and it kept being the one she looked at. I keep thinking about that. I spent a whole weekend trying to decode why the sketch did better. Posting time, caption wording, hashtags. And none of it was the reason. The one that mattered traveled through a completely different door and I was too busy staring at the front window to notice the side one was open the whole time. Not sure I have a neat take. Just that the numbers I can see and the things that actually move me forward seem to have very little relationship to each other, and I'm tired of pretending they're connected.

Studio Life·Kasia Nowak·4w

I spent three hours today on one nostril. Not the nose, the nostril. The highlight that runs along the side of it. I kept smudging it out and bringing it back and it still isn't right, and I know if I step back and look at the whole portrait from across the room it reads fine, maybe even good. But I can't stop. People keep saying pastel is forgiving, which tells me they've never tried to do a highlight on Unison that stays where you put it and doesn't just become a gray smear. I'm on my last stick of the pale peach I like for skin light and I already know I'm going to order three more tonight out of pure superstition, like the piece will fail if the supply runs out. My partner walked in and said "it's really coming along" the way he does when he knows I'm stuck and doesn't want to say the wrong thing. I said thanks and went right back to the nostril. I wonder if there's a version of me that could just leave it alone and call the day done instead of chasing it. She seems nice. I've never met her.

Pricing·Kasia Nowak·4w

Quoted someone €350 for a 50×70 pastel portrait the other day. She paused and said "oh, I thought it would be less." And the thing is, I actually agreed with her in my head for a second. That's the problem. I sat down after and did the real math. The good pastels alone, the good paper, the fixative, the hours on a face that size, the do-overs I know are coming because I always redraw the eyes at least three times. €350 is honestly on the low side of fair. But it still feels like I'm asking for too much. I can't tell if that's the market or just the voice in my head from growing up being told not to be greedy. She hasn't written back. Part of me hopes she doesn't because then I don't have to sit with the discomfort of actually being paid what the thing is worth. I'm trying to hold the line this time. We'll see.

Rants & Vents·Kasia Nowak·4w

Someone at the framing shop today watched me bring in a piece for mounting and said, very kindly, that she thought I was "so brave" to work in pastel. Brave. Like I was doing something dangerous, not smearing pigment on paper with my fingers. I know she meant it as a compliment. I stood there and smiled and thanked her. But all I could think was that pastel isn't the brave part. The brave part is showing the thing to anyone at all. The medium is just the messy way I got there. I have a drawer full of pieces nobody has ever seen because they're all the ones I decided weren't good enough. Those are the brave ones, honestly. The hidden ones. Weird how that works. Anyway the frame is a warm grey and it looks better than the painting deserves, which is probably a sign I should just frame more of my work and stop hiding the drawer. Maybe that's the real brave thing. Not the chalk. 🙂

Pricing·Kasia Nowak·4w

Finished a 30x40 portrait on Thursday. Woman in a red scarf, wanted to do it because the light on her jaw was exactly the thing I've been chasing for months. Took fourteen hours spread over a week. She asked the price before I started and I said €120. Never even paused. When I did the math after, that's €8.50 an hour plus the pastels worn down and the paper. I could make more babysitting. The worst part isn't the number. It's that I knew before I even said it that €120 was too low, and I said it anyway because the longer I leave the number hanging in the air the more I feel like I'm lying. So I blurt something out and then I'm stuck with it. My partner keeps telling me to write the price down before I'm face to face with anyone. God knows I've said the same thing to myself. Then it happens again. Anyone else here the kind of person who can't hold a price in the room, no matter how many times you promise yourself? I'm honestly starting to think I need someone else to do the talking for me.

General·Kasia Nowak·4w

I've spent this whole week on the same young woman's portrait, and I mean the same one, over and over. Nine versions on the easel now, taped to the wall like some kind of confession. Every time I get the eyes almost right and something else collapses, usually the mouth. Her lips are not expressive exactly, just slightly parted, and I cannot for the life of me get that to stop looking like hesitation. My partner keeps saying he can't even tell them apart, which I think is meant to be reassuring. It is not reassuring. But today the tenth one, I don't know what changed. Maybe I stopped trying so hard. The smudge on her cheekbone that I've been fighting all week just... stayed. And it's the one. The one I meant all along. So of course now I'm already scared I'll never do it again. That's the thing nobody warns you about. The good ones feel like accidents you didn't earn. Anyway. Leaving it up overnight. Not touching it till morning, that's the rule I never keep. Wish me luck. 🙂

Pricing·Kasia Nowak·4w

A woman from a Facebook group asked me for a pastel portrait of her grandfather from an old photo. I quoted €60 because I was terrified of losing the commission and I still don't think of myself as someone who can charge real money. Fourteen hours on A3 Canson Mi-Teintes. That's €4.28 an hour before the pastels I wore down and the paper. She framed it and sent me a photo of it on her wall and I was honestly happy for a minute. Then I did the math the next morning lying in bed and felt sick. The worst part is I know exactly why I did it. I priced the piece like my fear of being rejected was a material cost. I'm trying to be honest that the problem isn't that she haggled, she didn't even try. The problem is I offered myself cheap before anyone could. I've accepted two more commissions since then and I charged the same €60 for both because raising it felt like a betrayal of the first woman. Does anyone else have this thing where your own past quotes become a ceiling you can't lift?