Rants & Vents·Kasia Nowak·5h

i've been working on this portrait commission for two weeks. today she sends me the "final reference", it's one of those apps that smooths everything into plastic. no pores, no shadows under the eyes, the nose is literally a different shape. she looks like a sim character. i don't know how to tell her that i can't paint what isn't there. that the thing i'm actually good at is catching the light on somebody's actual face, the uneven bits, the way one eye is slightly smaller. that's the whole point of spending hours on pastel portraits instead of just running her photo through the same filter she already used. i said i'd send her some progress sketches this week and i'm dreading it. probably going to do a version that's technically accurate and a version that looks like her filtered face and let her pick. which feels wrong but i don't have the words to explain why.

General·Kasia Nowak·2d

I've been working on this portrait since Saturday. Soft pastel on Canson Mi-Teintes, the warm grey side. It's a woman in profile, nothing complicated, reference photo I took myself. And I cannot get her eye to look like it's actually seeing something. It's technically there, shape, shadow, pupil, highlight, but it's dead. A glass eye. A doll's eye. I redrew it four times. Rubbed it out with a kneaded eraser so many times the paper started to pill. Started over on a fresh sheet once. Same problem. It made me think, how much of what we do in portraits is just... faking life? I can render an eye perfectly. But rendering and bringing to life are two different things and I don't know how to bridge that gap. My partner says nobody will notice but I'll know. I always know. Has anyone else had that thing where a face just refuses to come alive? What do you even do? I'm tempted to just leave it and start the next one but it feels like giving up.

Marketing & Social·Kasia Nowak·3d

So I decided to actually log everything I did to promote my work in February. Not just guess, actually write it down. 27 hours. Twenty-seven hours of scrolling, posting, hashtag research, replying to comments, writing newsletter drafts I never sent, reading articles about algorithms, changing my bio three times. And you know what came from it? Two commission inquiries that both ghosted after I sent pricing. Meanwhile the one thing I actually sold last month came from someone who saw a piece in a café window where I'd left a business card months ago. Zero effort. Zero hours logged. I'm not saying marketing is useless. I'm saying I spent 27 hours doing stuff that felt productive and most of it clearly wasn't. I don't even know what to cut because it all felt important in the moment. Has anyone actually tracked this and changed what they do based on it? Or are we all just spinning plates and hoping?

Rants & Vents·Kasia Nowak·4d

Was buying a new pad of pastel paper at the art shop and then stopped for groceries on the way home. The cashier saw the paper sticking out of my bag and goes "oh, painting by numbers? my grandma does those." I just said no and smiled. But I've been thinking about it all evening. Why do people see someone with art supplies and immediately assume it's a hobby, a kit, something where you just follow instructions? Like the idea that someone might be actually trying to make something from scratch, badly or not, just doesn't occur to them. And I know it's not a big deal. It's a random comment from a stranger. But it's the thousandth time something like this has happened and I'm tired of feeling like I have to justify that what I do isn't just... coloring inside someone else's lines. Anyway. Put down a portrait tonight that I hated and scraped off with a razor. At least that was my own bad decision, start to finish.

Marketing & Social·Kasia Nowak·5d

I had this portrait I did last summer, a woman with her hair caught in wind, all warm ochres and pale blue. I was so proud of it at first, then after a few months I started seeing everything wrong with it. The jaw was off. The pastel dust had settled into the paper grain in a way I didn't like. I kept it in my studio, didn't even photograph it properly for Instagram. I mentioned it in passing to someone at a small market stall I was sharing last month, just complained actually, that I had this piece taking up space and nobody wanted it and maybe it was just a failed experiment. She asked to see it. I pulled it out reluctantly. She bought it on the spot. Not because I pitched it well. Because I stopped trying to make it sound like something it wasn't. I've been thinking about that a lot. How much energy I spend polishing the story around my work, making it sound impressive, desirable, worth someone's time. And the one time I just said "this thing exists and I'm not sure it's even good" it worked better than any of my careful descriptions ever did. Maybe the selling is in the honesty, not the framing. I don't know. I'm still figuring it out.

Rants & Vents·Kasia Nowak·1w

I took a finished portrait to get framed today and the woman behind the counter looked at it and said, with this sympathetic little head tilt, "oh, pastel. that's a shame, it's such a fragile medium, isn't it. not really archival." And then she showed me their "serious" framing options for oil paintings. I stood there holding my piece like a fool. It's a portrait of my friend's daughter, I worked on it three weeks, I got the light on her cheek right for the first time in maybe ever. And this woman just... dismissed it with one sentence. I didn't say anything smart back. I just said "oh" and let her frame it in something basic and left. And now I'm home and I'm so annoyed at myself for not saying anything. But also, what do you even say? It's not the first time someone's implied pastel is for hobbyists or children or people who don't want to commit to "real" paint. I keep thinking about that word. Fragile. Like my work is inherently less because of the dust on my fingers. Like the softness of it means it's weaker. Anyway. I'm going to keep using pastels because I love them. But I wish I'd said something. 😅

Studio Life·Kasia Nowak·1w

i have this rag i wipe my pastel dust on, just an old cotton cloth i found in a drawer, and months later it's this completely accidental thing, layers of every colour i've used, soft and muddy and somehow beautiful. i nearly washed it last week and then i thought wait. no. that's a record of something. my partner says it looks like a Rothko if Rothko worked at a garage. i'm not sure about that but i can't throw it away now. it's like a diary i don't know how to read.

Studio Life·Kasia Nowak·1w

There's this one pastel stick, a Sennelier, some kind of warm ochre, I don't even remember buying it, that sits in the front of my box and I only let myself use it for the first marks on a fresh piece of paper. Just the blocking-in, the loosest shapes, the part where nothing matters yet. If I pick it up later in the process it feels wrong. Like I'm cheating. It's almost gone now, just a stub. I'm going to have to find another one when it's finished and I honestly don't know what will happen if I can't get the exact same colour. Maybe I just buy ten of them next time so I don't have to think about it. Or maybe the whole ritual is in my head and any warm ochre would do the same job. But I don't want to test that theory.

Studio Life·Kasia Nowak·1w

it's thirty degrees in my studio and the pastels are soft and greasy in a way that makes everything feel like I'm drawing with butter. I keep stopping to wipe my hands and the paper is taking the pigment differently, more smudgy, less controlled. I'm trying to do a portrait and the nose keeps turning into a muddy streak. I know I should just accept it as part of summer drawing but I'm fighting it instead, pressing harder, making it worse. does anyone else just... refuse to adapt for like a week before giving in? or is that just me being stubborn

Gallery Outreach·Kasia Nowak·1w

I once sent a portfolio to a small gallery in Warsaw and they said no, politely, but no. And you know what? I was actually okay with it. The process of preparing the submission, getting my slides organised, writing the artist statement, it made me look at my own work properly for the first time. So even the no taught me something. Anyone else have a rejection that ended up being useful somehow? Or am I just trying to make myself feel better 😅

Rants & Vents·Kasia Nowak·1w

Still fuming about this from Saturday. I was at an open studio thing, just working on a portrait of an old woman I'd taken a reference photo of at the market. Her face is all lines and light, it took me maybe six hours to get the softness right in the cheek shadows, pastel is not forgiving if you rush it. This woman comes up, looks at it for maybe three seconds, and goes "oh, so realistic. It looks just like a photo. So where's the art in that then?" I just said "well, the photo is right there" and pointed at my phone. She didn't even look. Just walked off. And I sat there thinking, I spent a year learning how to not make pastel look muddy. I know exactly where every highlight on that face came from. I changed the light source entirely from the reference because the original was too flat. But sure. No art. Just copying, right? I didn't say any of that to her. I just smiled and went back to work. But I keep replaying it. Why do people think realism is just... cheating? Like there's no decision-making involved? Anyway. Just needed to put it somewhere. 😅

Gallery Outreach·Kasia Nowak·1w

I had a small gallery reach out last month, first one that ever seemed genuinely interested, and they wanted a six-month exclusivity agreement for my city. I panicked and said I'd think about it, and now I've been going back and forth for weeks. Part of me thinks, it's just one city, and it's a foot in the door. The other part thinks I'm too small to be locking myself into anything. I ended up not signing. Maybe I was too cautious, I don't know. Has anyone here actually done an exclusivity deal? Did it help you or hold you back? I'm trying to figure out if I made the right call or if I just talked myself out of something good.

Studio Life·Kasia Nowak·2w

i notice it when i'm working on something detailed, i hold the pastel like it's a ballpoint, all tense, my whole hand cramped around it. then i look at videos of proper pastel artists and they hold theirs so loose, like they're barely touching it, just grazing the paper. i have to physically stop and shake my hand out and remind myself i'm not writing an email. i've been at this five years now and my hand still doesn't believe it's allowed to be soft. anyone else's body just not catching up to what you're trying to do?

Studio Life·Kasia Nowak·2w

i ordered pastelmat like i always do and somehow ended up with a pad of canson mi-teintes that's way too smooth. the pastel just sits on top, doesn't bite, three layers and it's already muddy. i was so annoyed i almost threw it in the bin. but i have been working on the same reference for four days now on paper i hate and something weird is happening. because it's not taking the pastel well i have to be more careful, work lighter, actually plan each stroke instead of just smudging everything into a blur. the face i'm doing has more structure than anything i've made in months. it looks like a drawing instead of a dream i had. i think sometimes the wrong materials teach you something the right ones can't. or maybe i'm just making peace with wasting twenty quid on paper i won't buy again.🙂

Gallery Outreach·Kasia Nowak·2w

I had a gallery once that asked me to stop selling on my own, even prints, even at open studios. "It dilutes the brand," they said. I agreed because I thought that's how it works, right? They'll do the selling for you. Six months later I'd sold maybe two small pieces through them and my own sales had completely dried up. Anyone else had a gallery want exclusivity and then just... nothing? How do you even tell early on whether it's a real opportunity or they're just collecting artists?

Studio Life·Kasia Nowak·2w

There's this portrait I did maybe four months ago, a woman in profile, soft grey paper, pink and ochre pastel. The jaw is wrong, the ear sits too high, I gave up halfway and just let it sit there unfinished. I should have thrown it away so many times but I pinned it up instead, right where I see it first when I sit down to work. At first it just made me angry. Like, look at this, you can't even get a jaw right. But somewhere along the way it turned into a kind of permission slip. If I can start the day seeing that thing and still pick up a pastel anyway, then nothing else I do that day can be that bad. It's like a baseline for failure that makes everything else feel less scary. My partner thinks it's morbid. Maybe it is. But I've done more work in these last few months than in the whole year before, and I think the ugly little pin-up is part of it. Does anyone else keep something broken around to remind yourself it's fine to fail?

General·Kasia Nowak·2w

Working on a portrait from a reference photo I found in an old magazine, some woman I've never seen before. And I get to the mouth and I keep redrawing it and it's not working, and then I step back and realise, it's my mother's mouth. The upper lip thinner, the way the corner tucks in. I didn't put it there on purpose. It just came out of my hand. I don't even have a great relationship with my mother. So that's unsettling. Has your hand ever just. Drawn something from your life without asking you first? Like the muscle memory knows things you don't want it to know?

Pricing·Kasia Nowak·2w

So I finally did it. Added 150zł to my base price for a head-and-shoulders pastel portrait. 150. That's like... 35 euro. And I've been sitting here all evening convincing myself I'll never get another commission again. Thing is, I was still charging what I charged when I was visibly worse. I look at my old posts and I cringe. But the fear that people were only tolerating the price because they felt sorry for me, that's hard to shake. Like the new price will make them look at my work properly and go "oh, no, not for that." I know it's not rational. I know my materials cost alone has gone up. I just didn't expect to feel this weird about it. Did anyone else feel like a fraud the first time they raised their rates? Does it go away?

Artwork Feedback·Kasia Nowak·3w

I did a portrait yesterday I was genuinely happy with for once. Soft greys and a tiny bit of terracotta, the skin actually looked like skin. And then I sprayed fixative and it deepened everything by about two values and killed the light layer I had on top. So now she looks like she's in a dim room instead of the soft daylight I wanted. I know you're supposed to test on scraps. I never do. I'm too impatient and then I pay for it. Do you just... accept the shift and work lighter to account for it? Or is there a technique I'm missing? I've tried workable fixative between layers and final fixative at the end and it always changes something. Maybe I should just stop using it and keep everything under glass but then I worry about smudging when I ship.

Gallery Outreach·Kasia Nowak·3w

I finally got my first gallery interest last year. Small space, local, nothing fancy. They were excited about my pastels, I was terrified and thrilled. Then they sent the contract and it said I had to provide all framing myself, which, okay, fine, I get it for pastels since they're fragile. So I spent a small fortune getting proper frames made, shipped everything insured, held my breath. They emailed two weeks later saying the frames didn't fit their "aesthetic vision" and could I send different ones. I couldn't. I'd spent everything on the first set. So the whole thing fell apart. I'm still not sure if that was normal and I was naive, or if they were unreasonable. What's the weirdest thing a gallery has asked you to do that made you go... wait, what?

Wins·Kasia Nowak·3w

I've been trying to get this one reference right for months. Woman in profile, soft light from the side, nothing special about it except I couldn't stop seeing something in her expression that I kept missing on paper. 14 attempts. Some I abandoned after five minutes, one I worked on for three hours then wiped it clean with a cloth. Today I just sat down and did it in under an hour and I think I finally found it. Not perfect. But the thing I was chasing is there now. I sat staring at it for a good minute after and felt this... quiet. Like something settled. That doesn't happen often. Anyway I'm going to frame it maybe. Feels like I earned that. 🙂

Studio Life·Kasia Nowak·4w

i've drawn the same face maybe fifteen times in the last month. same tilt of the head, same heavy eyelid, same mouth just slightly open. i didn't plan it. i keep catching myself reaching for the same reference photo i saved months ago and didn't think twice about. i don't even know who she is. some actress maybe? a stock photo? i can't find the original anymore. my partner says it's like i'm trying to get one thing right before i can move on. maybe that's it. maybe i just need to get her exactly right once and then i can let her go. anyone else have a face that follows them around?

Marketing & Social·Kasia Nowak·4w

So I did this really stupid thing where I spent January keeping a spreadsheet of every like, comment, share, and save on every post I made across Instagram and Bluesky. I thought I'd find a pattern, you know? Something to reverse engineer. What I found is that the posts I spent hours on, proper process videos, well-lit shots of finished work, thoughtful captions, they got practically nothing. Meanwhile a quick phone photo of my pastel box with the caption "messy desk, trying to start" got triple the engagement. One time I posted a timelapse where I accidentally filmed myself sighing and rubbing my face before starting and people went crazy for it. I don't know what to do with this information. I want to be taken seriously as an artist but apparently what works is showing myself being a mess. Is the answer really just... performative struggle? Because I have plenty of that for free, but it feels wrong to lean into it on purpose.

Studio Life·Kasia Nowak·4w

spent sunday afternoon reorganizing my pastel box because i couldn't take the chaos anymore, half the sticks were broken, all mixed together, that layer of dust that gets everywhere. felt very adult about it. now i sit down to work tonight and i have no idea where anything is. i used to just dig around by feel and somehow find the exact grey i wanted. now everything is neat and colour-sorted and i keep grabbing the wrong one. my hand doesn't know where to go. maybe the mess was part of the process. 🙃 anyone else's system fall apart the second you try to organize it?

Gallery Outreach·Kasia Nowak·4w

Anyone else had a gallery that was super warm and enthusiastic, said they'd be in touch about a show, and then… nothing? I had one last year, two emails, a really nice zoom call, she said my pastels were "exactly what they've been looking for." Then radio silence. I waited three months and sent a polite follow-up, nothing. Still don't know if I said something wrong or they just changed direction or what. What do you do when that happens? Follow up again or just let it go? I keep thinking maybe I should have pushed harder but also don't want to be annoying.

Marketing & Social·Kasia Nowak·4w

I've been spending so much time on short-form video lately, mainly Reels for Instagram. But I see so many people having huge success on YouTube Shorts and I'm wondering if I should pivot? It feels like a totally different beast. The content that does okay on Reels feels too polished for Shorts sometimes, if that makes sense? Has anyone found a good strategy for both, or do you focus on one platform? My engagement is okay on Reels, but nothing like what I see some people getting on Shorts. Maybe I'm just looking at the wrong creators. It's hard to tell what's real and what's just a lucky spike.

Studio Life·Kasia Nowak·4w

Sometimes I am just mesmerized by how the soft pastel dust catches the light in my studio, especially late afternoon. It hangs in the air like a little bit of magic. Today I was working on a portrait, trying to get this one particular expression right, and I got lost just watching the pastel particles dance in the sunbeams. It's probably silly, but it's one of those small things that makes me feel so happy to be doing this. Even when the face I'm painting is fighting me. Does anyone else get distracted by the little studio phenomena?

Studio Life·Kasia Nowak·1mo

Seriously, paper scraps everywhere, pastel dust is settled on every surface like a fine layer of grey snow. My easel is covered in about five layers of different sketches for the same nose I can't get right. Coffee mug rings on my desk too. It's not pretty, but it feels like mine, you know? The chaos is part of the process, I suppose. Still, maybe tomorrow I'll attempt some sort of tidy-up. Maybe.

General·Kasia Nowak·1mo

weird thing i noticed about myself. i can paint alone in my flat for six hours and feel like im wasting my life. but the second someone walks past the window and slows down to look, suddenly im an Artist with a capital A, posture fixed, very serious about the brush. is it just me or is the whole thing a bit of a performance and we just don't admit it