Wins·Kasia Nowak·4h

Small thing, but I put the deposit down for a three day pastel portrait workshop in Katowice in October. It has sat open in my browser since April. I kept telling myself I would decide after the next piece was finished, and then obviously there is always a next piece. The part that made me press send, honestly, is that the tutor uses the same toned paper I do, the grey-blue Canson, and I have wanted for a year to watch someone else handle it live instead of guessing from videos. I have no idea what the level will be like. There is a real chance I am the slowest one in the room and I will spend three days quietly panicking at the back. But I paid, and it is not refundable, so now I go. I have never taken any proper class in my life, only books and the internet and a lot of ruined sheets. If any of you have done one of these, how did you survive the first hour? I am already thinking about what to bring and it is June.

Studio Life·Kasia Nowak·1d

Bought it off a woman in Podgórze for 80 złoty, she said it was her mother's. When I got it home and unfolded the legs there's pencil all over the back rail: dates, mostly. 1978, 1983, then a gap, then 1994, 1997. No names. One date has "nie wyszło" next to it and I've been thinking about that for two weeks. I keep meaning to sand it off and I keep not doing it. It's not sentimental exactly, I didn't know her mother. But there's something about the gap between 1983 and 1994 that I can't stop looking at. Eleven years. She must have been doing something else. Or she was working and just stopped writing it down. Anyway the easel is fine, it wobbles a bit on the left leg, and my hand still goes to the old one out of habit. If you've got old equipment with someone else's marks on it, I want to know if you kept them or cleaned them off. Mine is staying.

Marketing & Social·Kasia Nowak·2d

Not deleted the account, just archived everything. 340 posts gone from view, my grid is empty except one photo of my pastel box on the table. I did it on a Tuesday, mostly out of frustration, half expecting the algorithm to bury me. Nothing happened. No drop in reach, because I had nothing to lose really. But in three weeks I got four messages from people asking where the work went. Four. Two of them were artists I've followed for years and never once spoken to. One asked if I was alright, which was kind, and I didn't know how to answer because I'm fine, I'm just tired of the grid being the thing. The strange part is I've been painting more since. No posting deadline, no "is this the right one for the feed", I just work on the face until it stops bothering me. I finished two pieces last week and only showed one to my partner. I don't know if this is advice or just a thing that happened. Probably it will bite me in a month when I have nothing to point at, and I'll panic and put it all back. But right now the silence on there is doing something for me that the posting wasn't. Anyone else ever taken the whole thing down and felt lighter? Or is that just me being dramatic

Gallery Outreach·Kasia Nowak·3d

I emailed four galleries last winter with a link and a short letter, and got one reply, which was a no. Then in March I walked into a small place on a Tuesday afternoon with two pastels in a paper folder, mostly because I was in the area and felt brave for about ten minutes. The woman at the desk actually looked at them, and we talked for maybe twenty minutes. Nothing came of it in the end, but she remembered my name the next time I came by. So I think walking in worked better for me, which is annoying because emailing is so much less frightening. What actually got a reply for you? And if you email, how long do you wait before you assume it's a no?

Studio Life·Kasia Nowak·4d

Not the whole drawing, just the first blocking layer on the face. I caught myself doing it last night around eleven, mouthing numbers, and I got to somewhere in the forties before I noticed what I was doing and stopped. It started as a way to keep myself from overworking. If I know a layer took me nine minutes I can leave it alone. But now it's turned into a little ritual I can't skip, and when I forget where I was I have to start the count over, which is silly because the drawing doesn't know anything about it. The portrait on the easel is a woman I've done twice already. Third time. First two are in the drawer and stay there. Toned grey paper, mostly burnt sienna and a bit of a pale blue in the shadows of the neck, and last night the jaw finally did what I wanted and I sat there with my hand still holding the pastel in the air like an idiot, not wanting to touch it again. Anyway. Does anyone else have one of these small pointless habits that started as a useful trick and now just runs you? I would like to hear that I am not the only one talking to myself in numbers at midnight 🙂

Gallery Outreach·Kasia Nowak·5d

I'm asking because I nearly died of shame at this. First gallery I approached, they said send your artist CV, and mine was a blank page with one group show from 2019 and my day job on it. I panicked and wrote two paragraphs about "my practice" instead, which I'm fairly sure nobody read. Now I have a bit more and honestly the blank-CV years are still the thing I dread talking about. So: what did you actually do? Did you send the empty one, pad it out, leave the art out and just talk about yourself, or say nothing and hope they didn't ask? Tell me I'm not the only one who googled "artist CV no exhibitions" at 2am 🙂

Gallery Outreach·Kasia Nowak·6d

I'm not talking about the obvious ones like "we need money upfront." I mean the small thing you noticed in the meeting that made your stomach go tight. For me it was the contract. Two pages, and no line saying when it ends. I asked, and the owner said "oh, we don't really do that, it's a relationship, not a lease." He said it very nicely. I still did not sign it, and then I spent two weeks wondering if I had just thrown away my one chance 🙃 So tell me yours. The thing they said, or the thing that was missing from the paper. Partly because I want to know I was right to walk, and partly because I have another meeting in two weeks and I would like to know what to watch for 😅

Pricing·Kasia Nowak·1w

So I sold a small head study last week. Toned grey paper, maybe A3, one of the ones I did in a single sitting because I was trying to loosen up. I had it priced at 450 euros and honestly I typed that number and then went and made tea so I would not have to look at it. The woman wrote back asking whether the price includes framing. And I said no, framing is separate, I can recommend the place on Gołębia. Then I sat there feeling like I had cheated her somehow. Because the paper cost maybe 6 euros and the pastels I used were already here, so in my head the material cost is almost nothing and I forget the eleven years of doing this badly before I could do it this way. But here is the part I cannot get past. A frame at that shop is 300 euros. So the frame now costs two thirds of the drawing it holds. I do not know what to do with that information. Do I raise the drawing so it looks like a proper thing next to a 300 euro frame, or do I start recommending the cheap framer and hope nobody notices the difference at the edges. I am not even sure this is a pricing question. Maybe it is a "what is a drawing worth when the thing around it is worth more" question. But it is keeping me up, and my partner says I should just be glad it sold, which I am. I am. Just also not.

Marketing & Social·Kasia Nowak·1w

I spent about six hours on a pastel portrait last week, a face I've redone maybe five times now, and posted it. Got a polite handful of likes and one comment from a friend. Then on Thursday I was cleaning up and took a lazy phone snap of the box itself. Stubs down to the wrappers, the dust all over the lid, my thumbprints on everything. Didn't even wipe the table. That photo has four times the reach of the finished piece. I'm not going to pretend I understand it, exactly. I think people liked seeing the mess more than the result? Or maybe the finished thing is just harder to say something about. Anyway I'm not going to start posting only pastel dust. But it's stuck with me, and it made me a little sad about the portrait, honestly. Has this happened to anyone else, the working photo outperforming the work?

General·Kasia Nowak·1w

Working on a portrait of my neighbour, third attempt at the same face. I had one dark grey pastel, perfect for the line under the eyelid, and I ground it down to almost nothing over a week. Now the eyes look hard and dead and I know it's because I'm drawing with the side of something too blunt. I ordered a replacement four days ago. Polish post being Polish post, it's sitting somewhere in a sorting hall in Katowice. In the meantime I've been building up the ear and the jaw instead, telling myself it's "preparation". It's not, it's avoidance. But the jaw is honestly the best thing I've done in months, so maybe the delay is doing me a favour. Hard to tell when you're inside it. Does anyone else get weirdly attached to one stick of pastel like it's a tool you'll never find again? Or is that just me being sentimental about grey.

Rants & Vents·Kasia Nowak·1w

Can't leave it alone. That is the problem. I did the whole pastel, it was fine, a bit too soft maybe, and then I decided to just fix the left eye. Fixing one thing in pastel means going over a dark area with more dark and then hating it. Two hours. Now one eye sits on the face like a sticker someone pressed on afterward and I can't scrape it back because I already set the whole thing with fixative like a genius. The worst part is I knew. I had the can in my hand and I thought, maybe wait. I did not wait. I have about four sheets of this toned grey Mi-Teintes left and I keep wasting them on faces I've already done. Tomorrow I start the same face again from scratch, same reference, and pretend the last one never happened. That's the plan. It's not a good plan. If you've ever wrecked something at the very last step please tell me about it, I need the company.

Studio Life·Kasia Nowak·1w

I have this old cookie tin, the kind with the dented lid, and in it go the pastel studies that don't work. Not the disasters, I throw those out. The almost. The ones where the mouth is right but the jaw is wrong or the whole thing is just slightly dead in a way I can't name. I counted today while I was looking for a Sennelier that rolled under the desk. Forty-one. Eighteen of them are the same face. I don't know why I keep them or what I think will happen. It's not a nice tin to look through. But every time I say I will empty it I open it first and then I don't. There is one from maybe two years ago that is better than anything I have made since, and I don't know how I did it, and that is the real reason the tin stays full I think. Does anyone else keep the failures? Or do you destroy them properly like a functioning person. Asking for a friend who is me.

Gallery Outreach·Kasia Nowak·1w

I've been sitting on a list of four galleries for maybe three months now. Two of them I've written the email for, more or less. I have not sent either one. There's a polite version and a shorter version and I keep switching between them and neither feels right. The other option is to just walk in with a small folder of prints. Which is terrifying, but at least it's over in ten minutes instead of me refreshing my drafts folder every evening. So which is it for you? Email first, or walk in and take the chance that someone's at the desk? And if you email, what actually went in the first line, because mine currently starts with "I hope this finds you well" and I already hate it. I know one person who got her first show because she walked in with wet hair from the rain and the owner felt sorry for her. I'm not sure I can arrange weather on purpose.

Gallery Outreach·Kasia Nowak·2w

I'll start. A small place near me wanted to show three of my pastels and asked if I could "make the faces a little happier" for the opening night crowd. I said yes because I was too nervous to say anything else, then spent a week staring at one portrait trying to work out how you make a face happier without repainting the whole mouth. I ended up backing out and felt awful about it for a month, though honestly I think I saved myself. So what is the oddest edit or "small suggestion" a gallery ever gave you? And did you do it, or walk? I want to know if I was too precious about it.

Marketing & Social·Kasia Nowak·2w

A woman messaged me about a portrait of her mother. Small, A4 on toned paper, single figure, and I quoted 400 zloty. Which is roughly what I make on a piece after materials, if I am honest about the hours, which is around nine or ten spread over two weeks because I redo the jaw and the eyes until they stop looking wrong. Then I sent the price and immediately wrote "of course that is negotiable, sorry, I know it is a lot." In the same breath. Before she answered anything. She said yes without blinking. Paid the deposit that evening. And I have been sitting with that for three days now, feeling stupid, because I negotiated against myself for free and she never asked me to. I keep thinking about the ones who did not say yes. Maybe some of them would have. I will never know because I never gave them the chance to say no at the real number. Anyway. I am writing this here instead of doing the underpainting I should be doing. If you have a rule for this, some sentence you say instead of the apology, I would like to hear it. Mine keeps coming out before I can stop it.

Studio Life·Kasia Nowak·2w

There is a scrap of old cotton sheet in my lap whenever I work, grey-brown in the middle from wiping my fingers between colours, and I have gotten weirdly attached to it. I know it is filthy. It has streaks of a Schmincke burnt umber that dried months ago and I still use it. It has a shape now, worn to one corner where I always pinch it. Washing it would fix nothing and cost me something, I think. A clean cloth feels wrong under the hand, too smooth, no memory. So it just lives folded on the corner of the easel and I will die on this hill. What is the object in your space you refuse to clean or replace, even though you know you should? Tell me I am not the only one with a cursed rag.

Wins·Kasia Nowak·2w

I've had a pastel portrait of my sister sitting face-down on the shelf for about four months. Toned grey paper, a bit of Sennelier on the cheekbone that actually worked. I kept telling myself I'd fix the ear first. The ear was fine. I just couldn't stand looking at the rest of it next to the ear. She came over Sunday for coffee and I forgot it was out. She picked it up, turned it over, and said "oh, that's me," in this normal voice, not the polite gallery voice. Then she asked if she could have it. So I bought a frame today, 40x50, cheap one from the place on Karmelicka, and it's hanging in her hallway now. It is not my best work. The jaw is too heavy and I know exactly which stroke I should have left alone. But it's on a wall. In a house. Someone wanted it there. I don't think I've ever let a piece leave the room before without apologizing for it first, and this time I just said thank you, which took me a second to manage. Still strange to me that the ones I want to hide are sometimes the ones people see themselves in.

General·Kasia Nowak·2w

I am on the eleventh version of the same woman's face. Toned grey paper, terracotta and a bit of black, all of them lined up on the floor against the skirting board like a police lineup. The first one, which I did in maybe forty minutes on Monday, is the only one that looks alive. Numbers two through eleven are technically better. Better structure, better shadow under the jaw, the nose is actually a nose and not a smudge I got lucky with. And they are all dead. Flat. Like I drew the anatomy and forgot to put a person inside it. I don't know what to do with this information. Do I stop at the quick one and trust it? Because it feels like cheating, like saying the sloppy one is better because it was easy. Or do I keep going until I can be careful and alive at the same time, which might be number thirty and might be never. Frustrating week. Also my pastel box is now a mess of broken terracotta because I dropped it on Thursday, so there's that.

Gallery Outreach·Kasia Nowak·3w

Ok so mine: my hairdresser had a small wall of local art, and I gave her two pastel drawings mostly to stop myself throwing them away. Six months later someone who owned a tiny framing shop saw them there and asked if I had more. That was my first "show." It counted, I think? It felt like cheating anyway, like I skipped the real way. So how did yours actually happen? Cold email, walk in with a portfolio, a friend of a friend, some random place that had nothing to do with art? I want the real story, not the polite version. And tell me if you think the accidental ones count less, because I keep going back and forth on that.

Gallery Outreach·Kasia Nowak·3w

So my first ever "yes" was not a gallery at all. It was a little framing shop off Grodzka, the owner saw the pastels I brought in to be framed and asked if I wanted to hang two on her back wall. I said yes before she could change her mind. I had emailed maybe fifteen real galleries before that and got silence from every one, so honestly? The walk-in worked and the emails did not. Question for you all, and I know there is no right answer so please argue with me: when you were starting out, did you walk in with your work or did you send the email? And which one actually worked? I have a feeling the people who walk in get further, but I am too nervous to do it again, so tell me I am wrong or tell me I am right 🙂

Wins·Kasia Nowak·3w

Small thing I don't quite know how to hold. There was a little art fair on ul. Józefa yesterday, mostly ceramics and prints, one table with my pastels because a friend pushed me into it and I said yes mostly to stop talking about it. I priced them low. I was sure nobody buys a pastel in a plastic sleeve anyway. A woman in her sixties stood at my table for a long time and kept coming back to one head study, an old man on grey toned paper that took me three tries because the first two had no life in them. She asked who he was. I told her nobody, just someone I invented to practice the jaw on. She laughed and said that's the one, and paid me in cash and wanted the receipt signed, which I've never done before and my hand was not steady. It's the money, sure, but it's more that a stranger walked around for ten minutes and chose the face. My partner came home and I told him and then I cried in the kitchen, over a pastel. Ridiculous. I keep going between feeling proud and feeling like she made a mistake and will figure it out. Anyway. Does it get less strange, the first time someone you don't know takes a piece home?

Studio Life·Kasia Nowak·3w

Not a study exactly. More like I got stuck on the line from her ear down to the chin and kept thinking the next sheet would fix it. Eleven sheets of grey Canson, all of them on the floor around my chair now, and my thumb is so black it looks bruised. The annoying part is that I can see the problem in every one of them. Too soft in the corner. Then too sharp and she looks like a different person. Number seven is closest but I overworked the shadow under the jaw and now it sits flat. I know it is flat. I still cannot make my hand do the other thing. I read once that you should stop while it is going well, and I try, but with faces I never know when that is until two hours later when it is too late. Pastel does not let you take it back either. Once the tooth of the paper is full, that is that. Anyway. Does anyone else end up with a pile like this, or do you all stop at three and go make tea. I would honestly like to know what the stopping point feels like from the inside.

Gallery Outreach·Kasia Nowak·3w

I sent a proper email in March, polite, ten images, no reply at all. Not even a no. Then last week I walked into a small gallery here in Kraków with a folder of pastels under my arm, no appointment, and the woman at the desk actually looked through them. Nothing came of it but she talked to me for twenty minutes, which is twenty more than the email got me. So now I don't know which way is right. Email feels safe and then it just disappears. Walking in feels rude and also seems to be the only thing that works. My partner says I should stop overthinking it and go in again. Which one worked for you first, email or walking in cold? And does anyone actually get replies from the emails, or is it only me who hears nothing back? Sorry if this has been asked a hundred times 🙏

Rants & Vents·Kasia Nowak·3w

For three years I was working on this cheap grey Canson pad, the one that buckles if you breathe on it. Then last week I finally went to the shop on Grodzka and bought a proper sheet, the sanded kind, 60x45, and it cost more than my monthly bus pass. Now it's been sitting on the easel for four days and I have done exactly nothing with it. I keep walking past and thinking, this is the one I should do properly. Which of course means I can't start, because if I ruin it that's a real loss and not just another bad night on cheap paper. I did the maths on the bus home. One sheet = 22 litres of milk. And I'm scared of a piece of paper. The stupid thing is I know the fix. You cut it in half. You ruin the first half on purpose. I have told other people to do exactly this. But mine is still whole and still blank and I am still calling it, in my head, "the good one." How do you all get past this? Or do you just buy more of the cheap stuff and stay comfortable?

General·Kasia Nowak·4w

They arrived Tuesday, a Sennelier half stick set of greens. Thirty of them, all the way from the cold dark pine ones to a yellow green that is almost acid, and I keep opening the box and closing it again. The thing nobody tells you about pastel is that half the job is destroying it. You can't paint carefully with it, you have to break the sticks and grind them into the paper with your thumb, and every time I start a green I have this moment where I think, this one will be the muddy one, and then I do it anyway and it is muddy. I have a face I have been working on for three weeks. Toned grey paper, warm skin, and there is a shadow under the jaw that needs to be green or it goes dead. That is the whole reason I bought them. I know it, I have known it since the first week, and I still sat there tonight doing the ear again instead, which was already fine. It's such a stupid thing to be afraid of. Thirty sticks of pigment, and they cost more than my first box of everything. I'll ruin some of them and that's what they're for. Maybe tomorrow. Tomorrow I'm doing the jaw.

Marketing & Social·Kasia Nowak·4w

I put off raising my prices for almost two years because I was sure the interest would just evaporate. I'm not a name, I have no gallery, I draw faces on toned paper in my kitchen. In January I finally changed my portrait price from 400 zl to 650 zl. I sat with the cursor over the save button for maybe ten minutes, which sounds dramatic but is true. Since then I've had more commissions than the whole autumn. Same photos, same posting, same me. Two people told me they'd assumed I was cheap because the work looked "student level" at that price, which stung and also explained a lot. So I don't know what the lesson is. Maybe that people read the price as information about the work, not about the work itself. Or maybe it's just luck and next month it dries up completely and I'll feel stupid for saying any of this out loud. Is there a price point where you noticed the tone of the emails change? Not the volume, the tone. People are politer now, which is a strange thing to be glad about.

Studio Life·Kasia Nowak·4w

The back of a sheet of Canson Mi-Teintes is the honeycomb side, and for two years I would not touch it. It felt like the wrong side of the paper, the side for students. Then I ran out of the good side and started a face on the back out of pure frustration, and honestly the tooth grabs the pastel in a way I like more. Softer edges, the smudge stays where I put it instead of drifting. Now I buy the paper and immediately flip it. My partner asked why I pay for two usable sides and only ever use one, which is a fair question and I did not have an answer. There is a half-finished portrait of my neighbour on the honeycomb side right now, and I have already redone her mouth three times, which is normal for me, but on this paper the mistakes come off cleaner so it feels less like a disaster each time. I know some of you will say the honeycomb side eats your pastels faster. It does. I accept this. If anyone has figured out how to keep it from going muddy when you build up too many layers, I would like to hear it, because layer six is where mine always turns to dust and sadness.

Studio Life·Kasia Nowak·4w

They arrived Tuesday. The box has that wooden smell and the sticks are wrapped in paper like they're something precious, and I have been walking past them for three days now. Meanwhile I am still working with the flattened stubs from my cheap set, the ones that are basically just dust held together by hope. Which is silly. I know it's silly. You buy them to use them, that is the whole point, and I am not the kind of person who saves things for a special occasion. But there is something in my head that says if I break the good ones open I have to make something worth them, and I don't know yet if I can. The portrait on the easel is a study of my own hands, which is harder than I expected, and I keep thinking maybe I'll just do a few more of those first before I open the box. A few more. Sure. Anyone else have this? Or do you all just tear the paper off immediately like normal people.

Gallery Outreach·Kasia Nowak·4w

So I did something embarrassing last month. Went into a small place on ul. Estery with a folder of pastel prints, no appointment, mostly to see if I could bear being in the room. The woman was kind, looked properly at three of them, then asked what I would want for the biggest one. And it had sold. Two weeks before. To a friend of my partner, for basically nothing, because I panicked and said a number I made up in the moment. I stood there and said, "ah, that one is already gone, sorry" and she just nodded and moved on and I have been replaying it ever since. I still don't know what the correct thing was. Take the commission? Say I could do another? Wait, is that rude, to offer to remake something? So, tell me yours. What did you say when someone asked the price of a piece that was already sold, or that you'd never actually sell? Do you keep a list of numbers in your head ready, or do you make it up like me? I want to know if I am the only one who goes blank.

Gallery Outreach·Kasia Nowak·4w

I keep seeing people say "my first gallery" and I never know if we mean the same thing. Mine was a framing shop on the edge of the old town that hung local work on two walls and took 40%. It was technically a gallery. It felt like a shop with ambitions. But it was the first place anyone hung my pastels where a stranger could see them, so I count it. Did yours count? Proper gallery with a real program, or was it a cafe, a corridor, a hairdresser's, a friend's bookshop? And how long did you keep calling it your first gallery before you stopped? Mostly I want to know if I'm the only one quietly upgrading my own history 🙂