Studio Life·Sol Reyes·4h

There's a crack in my studio wall that runs diagonal, from the top corner down toward the window. I've been staring at it for three weeks now. I keep catching myself mid-paint, brush loaded, just tracking that line like it's the most interesting thing in the room. Today I finally understood why. It's the same shape as the vein in someone's forearm I haven't been able to stop drawing. So I've been wrestling with a figure all week and the wall was showing me the answer the whole time. I'm an idiot sometimes. Anyway I traced the crack onto the canvas in charcoal before I lost it. We'll see if it survives. Does anyone else's studio object literally tell them what to paint or is it just me living with the ghosts of cheap plaster.

Studio Life·Sol Reyes·1d

There's a layer of charcoal dust on every single surface in here. The radiator, my coffee mug, the window sill, somehow the ceiling fan blades. I wiped the floor yesterday and it looked like I'd been making storm clouds out of pure soot by tonight. People come over and I watch them look at their hands after they touch anything. Wild that I've just accepted this as my life now. You'd think after twelve years I'd have figured out a system but no. The system is I sweep when I can't see the floor anymore and my whites are all technically greys. The funny thing is I love it. I clean the studio for a client visit or a photo and it feels wrong, like I've sanded all the texture off the room. The mess is proof something happened today. Some days the work is terrible but the mess is still there and that counts for something I think. This place is basically a crime scene of me trying.

Wins·Sol Reyes·2d

I have this thing with hands. Couldn't draw them for years, they always came out like claws or weird sausages and I'd just crop the paintings at the wrist and pretend it was a creative choice. Ten years of that. Today I was working on this big charcoal piece, two bodies reaching for each other, and I didn't even think about it. Just drew the hands and they were THERE. Like actual hands. I sat back and just stared at them for a while. The whole piece is still unfinished and honestly might be garbage by morning, I know how I get, but right now I'm just sitting with this one small thing that finally clicked. All those bad drawings nobody saw. They were going somewhere. No big point here. Just wanted to say it out loud somewhere people would get it.

Gallery Outreach·Sol Reyes·3d

Ok real talk, what's the worst thing a gallery or collector has ever said to you about your work, the thing that showed they did NOT see it at all? Mine: a gallery owner once told me my charcoal work would sell better if it was "happier, more decorative" and suggested I add some flowers. Flowers. To my figures. I almost laughed in her face and then I almost cried. I still think about it when I'm putting a piece up somewhere. It's like they looked at everything I am and said "but can you make it prettier please." What's the one that stuck with you?? The one you still bring up at dinner 😭

Marketing & Social·Sol Reyes·4d

So I was brutalizing a canvas at 1am, the one that wasn't working, and I filmed 20 seconds of myself just slashing at it out of pure frustration, no plan, no caption strategy, phone propped on a paint can. Posted it the way you post something you don't care about because you're too tired to care. 106k views. My best planned post this month did 800. I've been sitting here trying to reverse engineer what the hell happened. Was it the rawness? The fact that I didn't look "on", I looked like a person actually struggling with the thing, not a person performing struggling with the thing? The lighting was garbage. I had no ring light. I genuinely look like a raccoon in it. It's making me question every polished thing I've put out. Like do people smell the production the way dogs smell fear. The comment section was full of people just... being honest about their own blocked creative work. Nobody even asked about the painting. It wasn't about the art. It was about watching someone not be okay for a second and keep going anyway. Anyway now everything I post feels fake in comparison and I hate that. But also maybe that's the answer and I just need to accept my content strategy is "genuinely losing it, filmed badly." 😭

Pricing·Sol Reyes·5d

First gallery solo show last spring. I priced the piece I thought was my best at $900 because I was scared nobody would pay more for something from someone nobody's heard of. It sat there for eight months. Meanwhile the one I almost didn't hang, the one I thought was too messy, too much, I priced at $1,600 just to test my own nerve. Sold in a week to a woman who said it made her cry. I keep replaying that. Not the money, the thing it says about what I think my work is worth vs what it actually does to people. I undersold the one I loved because I was ashamed of loving it that much. The safe price was the insult, not the other way around. Bumped my base rate for the new series. Told myself $1,200 minimum and I'm still twitchy about it. Somebody tell me it gets less terrifying or just lie to me, either works.

Gallery Outreach·Sol Reyes·6d

I've never once gotten a reply from a cold email. Not one. But the two actual gallery conversations I've had came from walking in somewhere with a small portfolio and just talking to whoever was at the desk like a human. Both times they said "email us" and both times nothing happened after lol. So what's the real move here? Do people actually land shows from cold outreach or is it all who you know and showing your face? Tell me I'm wrong, I want to be wrong, I'm tired of driving places with my work in the trunk hoping someone's in a good mood.

Artwork Feedback·Sol Reyes·1w

Every single time. The body will be alive, charcoal doing exactly what I want, the shoulders and the tilt of the head all working. Then I get to the face and something in my hand goes tight and I overwork it into a mask. Dead. Flat. I know the fix is to stop. I never stop. I stood back today and looked at this piece that was genuinely good up to the chin and I wanted to throw it across the room. I think it's that I'm scared. Like if I don't nail the face then the whole thing was for nothing, which is dumb because the whole thing IS the whole thing. The face is like 10% of the surface. But my brain treats it like the final exam. Anyone else do this with a specific part? Where you'll happily wreck a whole canvas but the second you hit this one spot you turn into a control freak? I've been trying to paint the face last and loose, just suggestion, and I keep caving. Would honestly love to know if anyone broke this or if we're all just fighting the same gremlin.

Pricing·Sol Reyes·1w

Finished a portrait last week, charcoal on paper, roughly 40 hours across two weeks because I kept hating it and redoing the eyes. Charged €500. After paper, charcoal, fixative, the framing, and the courier there was about €270 left. That's €6.70 an hour. A barista makes more than that here and they don't go to bed smelling like fixative. And here's the thing that's really chewing on me. The woman who commissioned it loved it. Cried when she saw it, said it was the first thing that ever actually captured her mother. She would've paid double. I know she would've because when I was scared to say a number I lowballed out of pure nerves and she didn't even blink. I keep telling myself I'm still building my name and the exposure counts. But €6.70 an hour for work that genuinely wrecked me to make isn't building anything except resentment. I need to charge what it actually costs me to live and breathe into a piece or I'm going to burn out before anyone's ever heard of me. How do you get over the fear of naming a number out loud and just letting it hang there while they decide if you're worth it? Because I physically feel sick every single time.

Studio Life·Sol Reyes·1w

Stopped mid-pose today and just stared at the model's hands. She wasn't doing anything, just sitting, hands resting on her knees. And I couldn't draw them. I kept putting charcoal down and erasing, down and erasing. Fifty minutes of that. Finally she asked if I needed a break and I said no, I'm fine, I just forgot how to see for a second. She laughed. The whole room laughing at my crisis. Then I turned the paper sideways and drew the hands as abstract shapes, not hands. Just dark masses and the light where the skin folded. It worked. It's the best drawing I've made in a month. I don't know why I keep needing to be reminded that the answer is almost always to stop naming what I'm looking at. The second I called them "hands" they became a problem. The second I called them "dark shapes against light" they were just true. Anyway. Tonight I'm in love with that drawing and tomorrow I might hate it. The usual.

Pricing·Sol Reyes·1w

Quoted a regular €350 for a 100x100 figure piece and her husband laughed on the phone in the background. Not a snicker, a real laugh, like I'd told a joke. She tried to play it off, I could hear her shushing him. I sat there holding the phone and my face went hot. Here's the knot in my stomach: I didn't get mad, I got embarrassed. Like I'd overstepped by asking. That's the part that keeps me up. I know what the work costs me, I've done the math, I've seen the "raised it 40% and nobody blinked" energy and I want that so bad. So I dropped to €250. And I still feel sick about it. Not because €250 is nothing, but because I handed over the whole thing on a platter the second I felt small. Two weeks of charcoal, probably 40 hours on this one. That's €6 an hour pretending my materials are free. I'm gonna tell her the real price next time. Or I'm gonna stop answering calls when I can feel myself caving. One of the two. 😭

General·Sol Reyes·1w

Needed to restock tonight and my usual shop was closed so I walked into the stationery aisle of the supermarket and grabbed the budget charcoal, the kind in the flimsy grey box. Figured it would be trash. It's not trash. It's got this leaner, drier bite than my soft stuff and it made me draw sharper than I have in weeks. Less forgiving, so I had to actually commit to a line instead of smudging my way out of a mistake. Now I'm sitting here annoyed that I've been paying triple for the fancy sticks. Also slightly worried I'm the kind of person who romanticizes the cheap version just because it's cheap. Both things can be true. My hands are black and the whole room smells like burnt wood. Good night. ❤️🔥

General·Sol Reyes·1w

Ok so I did this thing where I drew my own hand every night for thirty days. Same hand, same angle basically. Just to see if it would stay boring. Day 1 I wanted to throw the sketchbook across the room. My hands are ugly and I hated every line. Day 11 something shifted and I stopped trying to make it look like a hand and started trying to make it FEEL like the hand that's been doing every single thing for me. Day 30 I cried a little and I'm not even embarrassed about it. It stopped being a hand. It became all the damage and all the work and all the love I've ever done with it. Nobody tells you that drawing the same boring thing over and over turns into drawing your whole life. I'm not saying everyone should do this but I'm also not not saying it. If you try it tell me what day you break

General·Sol Reyes·2w

Ripped a canvas in half at midnight last night because the face I'd been fighting for three days looked like a mannequin. Dead eyes, nothing behind them. I mixed that pigment for hours, I knew every mark on there, and it still felt like furniture. Slept four hours, woke up at 6am, grabbed the first scrap of paper I found, a receipt from the corner store, and drew the same face in charcoal in about nine minutes. It was alive. It had a pulse. All that "control" and technique I'd been so proud of was the thing killing it. I have a box of ruined canvases under my bed. Twelve of them. Some of them are genuinely good and I still can't look at them without wanting the person in them to look back at me. Anyone else keep your failures around like that or do you burn them?

Pricing·Sol Reyes·2w

Sold a big charcoal piece for $400 three weeks ago. Was so excited someone wanted it I didn't think twice. Then the custom frame arrived yesterday, $280 with glass and shipping, and I just sat there staring at the invoice like an idiot. So net on that one is $120 for what took me about nine days of work, and that's before any studio rent or charcoal. I keep doing this. I price from "will they say yes" instead of from what the work actually costs me. And the worst part is I'd already told everyone how happy I was to sell it, so now I'm just quietly wearing it. Trying to actually write out my real numbers tonight. Hours, materials, the whole ugly math. If it comes out to $3 an hour again I might scream. Anyone else price from fear and regret it every single time?

Studio Life·Sol Reyes·2w

Okay hear me out. I was at the dollar store because I needed tape and I saw this pack of charcoal sticks, no brand, probably made of regret and sawdust, $1.25 for six. Figured whatever, I'll use them for sketching in my tiny book. I have not touched my good willow charcoal since Tuesday. These cheap little bastards are SO gritty and broken and they do exactly what I want without fighting me. The good stuff is too polite. This stuff is like drawing with a burnt twig you found on the sidewalk. My piece right now has this raw texture I've been chasing for weeks and it came out of a no-name stick that probably cost four cents. I'm honestly a little mad about it. I spent $40 on fancy charcoal last month and the universe hands me the answer in the checkout aisle. Anyway the piece is the best thing I've made since spring. I want to frame it and also light it on fire, the usual. 😭

Studio Life·Sol Reyes·2w

Dragged out the old portfolio tonight to find a reference photo and there it was, this charcoal piece from 2016. Before I knew anything. Before I'd burned through a hundred bad drawings. And here's the thing. It's good. Like, actually good. The hand is a little off and the proportions aren't right but god the FEELING in it. That rawness. I remember being so embarrassed by that piece I almost threw it away. I thought because it wasn't technically right it wasn't worth anything. Now I'm sitting here with the work I've made this month, cleaner, more confident, and I keep thinking, I want some of that back. That person didn't know what she was doing and she didn't care. She just needed to get it OUT. I don't know if you get more naive as you learn or what. But I'm going to try something tomorrow. I'm going to paint like I don't know anything. See what comes up. Scared it'll be shit. Scared it'll be the best thing I've made in years. Maybe both.

Studio Life·Sol Reyes·2w

My good willow charcoal ran out at 9pm and I needed to keep going on this piece so I walked to the corner shop and they had this cheap stick, no brand, wrapped in foil, four quid. I think it's for drawing on packaging not art. And it's making the fattest blackest marks I've ever gotten, like the stick is furious about being sold at a corner shop and taking it out on the paper. Should probably be annoyed I spent £40 on the fancy stuff but honestly most of my best work happens by accident or desperation. Give me a surface that might reject me and I show up better than I ever do with a clean setup. Maybe that's the whole thing. Maybe I should stop buying nice materials and just raid the corner shop forever. Not sure the piece is good but I'm lit right now about these marks. That's usually a bad sign. 😭

Marketing & Social·Sol Reyes·3w

Accidentally archived the reel that had 200k views and something like 12k saves. Panicked for an hour. Then two paintings sold that week that had literally been sitting for months, and I'm pretty sure the buyers found me through a random older post instead. I'm not saying the algorithm is fake or whatever. I'm saying I built this whole mental story about which piece of content is "doing the work" and I had no actual evidence. The reel was king, I decided. It was not king. It was just loud. Now I'm kind of obsessed with what actually converts vs what just feels good to watch. The boring in-progress shot from my shitty studio light outsold the cinematic golden hour timelapse every time this month. Every time. I don't know what to do with that except stop guessing and start treating every post like a goddamn experiment.

General·Sol Reyes·3w

Painted a portrait of my sister all week. Her face, the whole thing, really got somewhere with it around 2am. Woke up this morning and I couldn't look at it. The eyes were right but the mouth was wrong and I hated it so much I covered the whole canvas with gesso before I'd even had coffee. Now it's just a white rectangle on the easel and I already miss her. Wild how that works. I'd rather have an ugly painting I could've fixed than a clean slate. Every single time and I never learn. My therapist says this is a pattern. Yeah. It's called making art I guess. 😭

Marketing & Social·Sol Reyes·3w

I put this charcoal piece up and it got 31 likes. THREE. ONE. I was honestly kind of gutted because I thought it was one of the best things I'd made all month. Left it alone, forgot about it, moved on. Then three weeks later somebody commented "this is what grief actually looks like" and someone else replied asking if it was for sale. That one comment chain did more than the whole initial post. Sold the piece. The algorithm is just... serendipity with a delay, I guess. I keep trying to reverse engineer what makes a post land and it genuinely feels like throwing darts blindfolded. The pieces I pour my whole self into flop and the quick sketch I almost didn't bother scanning does numbers. I don't know if I'll ever get it. But that comment, from a stranger who SAW it, that meant more than any number of likes. I'm not even sure what the takeaway is. Post the work anyway. Somewhere out there someone's waiting to see it, you just don't get to pick when.

Gallery Outreach·Sol Reyes·3w

Went and looked at a space I was excited about, first meeting, and the guy says my work is "interesting but could use some polish." Told me my figures were "too raw" and asked if I'd consider softening things up for the clientele. I laughed at him. Literally laughed out loud. I do not paint things soft. That's the whole point of me. Walked out and never looked back. Still glad I did, but man it stings when you know they saw your work and just wanted a different person's work with your name on it. What's the worst note or comment a gallery or rep ever gave you? The one that made you question whether they even saw the same paintings you made?

Marketing & Social·Sol Reyes·3w

Posted a finished oil piece last week, proud of it, lighting was good, spent an hour on the caption. 47 likes. Barely a blip. Three days later I threw up a half-finished charcoal study at 2am, no caption, just two words and a period, basically a scrap. 4,000 views and it's still getting saves. People are DMing me about it. I don't know what to do with that. It's not even a good drawing, the hand is wrong, I was tired. But something in the mess of it hit people and the polished thing didn't. I've known this for years and I still chase the wrong thing every single time. The grid wants the raw and I keep giving it the framed. Anyone else find the stuff you almost didn't post is always the stuff that lands?

General·Sol Reyes·4w

Finished a big charcoal piece tonight, two figures tangled up, and I stood there for like ten minutes just... oscillating. Thought it was the best thing I've ever made, then immediately wanted to tear it off the wall. Same painting. Nothing changed. Just my stupid brain flipping a coin. The scary part is I've learned to trust the hate more than the love. The love is my ego showing off. The hate is usually the thing that's actually true, the part that's not working. But then sometimes I've burned things I should've kept because I was in a bad mood at 2am. How do you tell the difference between "this is actually bad" and "I'm just tired and scared"? I genuinely don't know and I've been doing this for years. Tonight I just taped it to the wall and walked away so I don't do something drastic before I've slept on it.

General·Sol Reyes·4w

Found a self-portrait I did in 2019 while clearing out storage. Before I had any idea what I was doing, before I'd even touched oil. Just charcoal and sheer desperation. It's rough as hell, the anatomy is all wrong, but I keep staring at it because the eyes are honest in a way I can't fake now. I've gotten so much "better" and I'm not sure better is the same thing as truer. Been thinking about that all day. Do I still paint like the person who made that? I honestly don't know and it's kind of eating at me.

Artwork Feedback·Sol Reyes·4w

Started a big piece this week, two figures, and I've redrawn the same left hand about fourteen times. Charcoal, oil wash, charcoal again. It's ANATOMICALLY fine, like the fingers are where they go and the proportion is right. But it's dead. It's a diagram. I can draw a face and get all the feeling I need but a hand just sits there like a glove on a table. I know a guy who went to art school who would say it's because I never learned the underlying structure, and honestly maybe that's true. But I don't want a technically perfect hand. I want the one that looks like it's mid-sentence. The one that's about to reach for something. Took a photo of my own hand holding a pencil this morning, just to stare at it, and the weird thing is the photo is boring too. The hand is boring. It's what the hand is DOING that has the life in it. Think I might just paint it wrong on purpose and see if that's closer to right. Worst case I burn it, I've done that before. 😤

Gallery Outreach·Sol Reyes·4w

Okay I need stories because I almost walked into a trap this week. Gallery loved my work, talked all this big show stuff, then slid in "small admin fee" and I got that itch. Walked. My worst one though was way back, first time I ever had a gallery interested. The owner kept calling my pieces "decorative" and said they'd need to see my "process documentation" before they'd commit. Real weird. I should've known the second they said that, but I was so desperate to be wanted I almost went along with it. What's the biggest red flag you've seen from a gallery and did you get out in time? Or did you ignore it and pay for it later? Tell me I'm not the only one who's been this naive 😭

Pricing·Sol Reyes·4w

Raised my charcoal portrait rate from €250 to €400 after a year of people telling me "you're too cheap, you undersell yourself." Everyone said do it. Everyone. Lost every single client. All of them. The two commissions I had booked cancelled the next week. Three months now, nothing. I keep checking my DMs like a loser. And the worst part is I know the work is good. It's not impostor syndrome talking, this batch of pieces is some of the best stuff I've ever made. But nobody will pay the price that's actually fair for what goes into them. I'm sitting here genuinely considering dropping back down to €250. And I hate that because everyone warned me this is the trap, this is exactly what they said would happen, that I'd cave. But rent doesn't care about my dignity. €250 for 22 hours of work is €11 an hour. I know that's insane. But it's food money. Anyone else just... hit the wall and folded back to the old number? Or actually waited it out and survived?

Pricing·Sol Reyes·4w

Sold a 16x20 charcoal portrait this week for $180 and I finally did the math I've been avoiding for years. 22 hours on it. That's $8.18 an hour and I'm honestly embarrassed I typed that out. The worst part is I knew better. She was my aunt's friend so I did the "family discount" thing before she even asked. Aunt's friend, not even family. I gave away money nobody asked me to give away. I keep doing this. I price from fear. Fear that if I say $400 she'll say no and I'll have wasted the charcoal. But I already spent the hours. The hours are spent either way. I'm not mad at her. I'm mad that I can't seem to stop being the one who underprices myself before anyone else gets the chance to do it. Every single time. Like I'm pre-emptively apologizing for being worth something. Gonna sit with $8.18 for a while and try to actually feel it instead of just doing the math again next time and doing the same thing.

Studio Life·Sol Reyes·1mo

Ok confession: I've been painting on scraps and old cardboard for weeks because I was too scared to touch the good linen. Told myself it was "economic" but really I was just terrified of wasting a $40 surface on a bad idea. So today I went and bought 12 mid-range canvases, stacked them by the easel, and just started throwing charcoal at the first one with zero plan. The first one's already a mess. I love it. That's the thing, when the surface is cheap enough to ruin you actually take risks and then you make the weirdest stuff. I keep having to learn this lesson over and over. 😭 Anyone else hoard their good supplies like it's the last loaf of bread? Because I need to know I'm not alone. I've got entire drawers of nice brushes I'm "saving" for something.