General·Sol Reyes·20h

Nine hours on this head. NINE. Got the mouth exactly where I wanted it, the whole lower half was singing. Then I stepped back and the thing was dead. Correct and dead. Like a very good photograph of a person who wasn't there. So I took a rag and wiped through the whole face. Not carefully. Just dragged it. Now there's a smear where the nose was and somehow it's doing more than the nine hours did. I keep walking past the easel and getting that drop in my stomach like when someone looks at you too long. I know people will say I ruined it. My neighbor already said it and she was standing in the doorway so I couldn't even argue. Anyway I'm not sleeping tonight. Not in a bad way. Not in a good way either. Anyone else work themselves into a hole just to find out the hole was the point?

Pricing·Sol Reyes·1d

Nine hours on a charcoal head, 300 euros. She sat down, saw the first version, and just started crying, and I sat there not knowing what to do with my hands and then said the price out loud and it came out as 300. I watched my mouth do it. Couldn't stop it. Here's the thing nobody warns you about: the discount doesn't stay with that one person. Word travels. Her sister messaged me last week, lovely message, "my sister says you're amazing, she says it was 300." Now I'm either the artist who charges 300 or the artist who has to explain why she was 300 and this one is 900. And I already know I'll do a bad job explaining it because I'll feel mean. The worst part is I don't even regret it. That painting is good. She cried. But I did the math after, 300 divided over nine hours plus the paper plus the fixative plus the two days I couldn't work because I'd used my whole arm doing it. And I'm 31 and I still live in a flat with a bathroom I won't describe. How do you actually say no to the second person without making the first person feel like a charity case.

Studio Life·Sol Reyes·3d

I'm not allowed to leave the studio without making the first mark on the next thing. That's it. One mark. Usually it's a line I don't even like, just to break the white. Because the white is the whole problem. I can stand there for an hour rearranging jars like the jars are the issue. They are not the issue. The issue is that an untouched sheet of paper is a promise and every mark I make on it is a disappointment for about twenty minutes. Today it was a shoulder. Just a shoulder, no head, no body, nothing that made sense yet. Took me about four seconds. Sat back down and suddenly I had something to argue with, and arguing is the only way I actually work. The rule sounds so dumb written out. But it's the only thing that's gotten me into the studio seven days in a row this month. What's the dumb thing you do to get started? I want to steal it.

Rants & Vents·Sol Reyes·4d

Ok so the thing nobody warns you about with big figure work: you get ONE part right and it turns on you. I was doing the lower half of this standing figure all afternoon, mostly fighting the knee because knees are evil and nobody talks about it enough. Got it. Finally got the shape and the weight and the little dent of shadow under it and I was actually pleased, which is rare and dangerous. Now the thigh above it reads like a balloon full of pudding. The kneecap is so good it's making the rest of the leg look lazy. I've been standing in front of it for twenty minutes doing that thing where you tilt your head like the angle is the problem and not the leg. Past me would have wiped the whole thing. I'm not doing that tonight. I'm going to eat something and go to bed and tomorrow I'll fix the thigh. Probably. Unless I decide the knee is the problem after all. This is genuinely the dumbest job in the world sometimes.

General·Sol Reyes·5d

So I said yes to a show in April. Six pieces, all new, "a body of work." Sounded great on the phone. I was on a high that week, which is how I make most of my decisions, and then the high left and the deadline stayed. The big one is going well. It's a face, or almost a face, and I've got that thing where I can't look at it directly, I have to catch it from the side of my eye. The other five are ghosts. Two stretchers still in the plastic. A roll of canvas leaning against the wall like it's judging me. I keep starting things and hating them by the second sitting, which is new, because usually I hate them by the fourth. The part I can't figure out is whether the deadline is making me sharper or just making me fast in a bad way. There's a real difference between work that's raw and work that's rushed and I'm not always honest with myself about which one I'm doing. I know what my good stuff feels like when it's coming. This doesn't feel like that yet. It feels like I'm performing "artist with a deadline" instead of actually being one. Anyway. If you've done the gallery thing, did it ruin the work or did the work survive it

Marketing & Social·Sol Reyes·6d

I do open studio stuff now, which is a nice way of saying I leave the door to my studio open and hope someone wanders in. Last month a guy came in because he thought it was a garage and stayed 40 minutes. Bought a small oil head study for €180, cash, and told me it was because it looked "unfinished in a way that felt honest." Then he posted it on his own account. Not mine. His. In his hallway with a lamp I would have told him to move. That post did more for me than the last six months of my own grid. I have no idea what to do with that information. I've been trying to build this tidy little funnel of print sales and reels and it turns out what actually moves the needle is standing next to a wet canvas smelling like turpentine while someone talks themselves into it. Which is not scalable and I can't put it in a caption and honestly it makes me want to delete everything and just paint with the door open and stop pretending I understand the internet. Do any of you sell in person and just... not bother with the rest? Or am I about to talk myself out of something that's quietly working

Wins·Sol Reyes·1w

The gallery lady left a message on a Tuesday and I listened to it eleven times without calling back. Not exaggerating. Eleven. I counted, because I kept deleting it and then pulling it back out of the deleted folder like a raccoon. Here's the thing nobody tells you when you're self taught: the work is the easy part. Standing there saying "yes, those are mine, I made those, they're worth money" is where I turn into a person who suddenly has to go reorganize the turpentine shelf. Anyway I called her back today. Took me two weeks and a walk around the block twice before I could hit the button, and she picked up on the second ring and was completely normal about it. We're doing six pieces in March. I hung up and sat down on the floor of my kitchen for a minute. Still don't have the wall list figured out. Still convinced one of the six is the worst thing I've ever made. Both of those are true and I'm doing it anyway.

Gallery Outreach·Sol Reyes·1w

Ok I want to settle something. I keep hearing you need a big fancy intro email with your whole CV and artist statement and a link to everything and a paragraph about your ~practice~ and honestly I think that's bullshit. The one that got me my first real studio visit was 4 sentences. Said who I was, said I make big charcoal figures, said I'd seen their show in March and the piece near the door wouldn't leave my head, asked if I could bring work by. That's it. No attachment. No CV. I think they said yes BECAUSE it was short, like it sounded like a person and not a submission. So what was yours? Paste the actual thing if you still have it, or just tell me how long it was and whether it worked. I want to know if the short one is really the move or if I just got lucky. Tell me I'm wrong, I can take it.

Studio Life·Sol Reyes·1w

Counted them today while I was stalling on a big figure piece. 41 stubs. Some of them are just a smear of black dust in the bottom of the tin and I still won't dump it, because that dust is what I use to push the deepest shadows on a face. You can't buy that. You have to make it by grinding your knuckles down for months. Ordered two boxes of Nitram last week like a responsible adult and then went right back to the nubs. There's something about the last half inch of a stick that makes me draw better. Nothing left to lose on it I guess. Meanwhile this figure has been staring at me from the easel since Tuesday and I've redrawn the left hand eight times. It's not the hand. It's that I know once the hand is right I have to actually finish the thing and then I have to look at it. Classic. Anyone else keep a tin of trash they'd fight someone over

Gallery Outreach·Sol Reyes·1w

Genuinely want to settle this one. I walked into a gallery cold. No appointment, no email, just showed up with a folder of charcoal drawings and asked if anyone had five minutes. Got told no twice, third place the woman actually looked at them and I've been in two shows there since. I know people who swear that's the worst thing you can do, that you're supposed to email, wait, do the whole polished thing. So which camp are you in? Email first or show up in person? And if you've done both, which one actually got you the yes? Tell me I'm wrong about walking in, I can take it.

Rants & Vents·Sol Reyes·1w

I've been rationing it. Squeezing the tiniest worm out onto the palette and then working it with a palette knife like I'm stretching a paycheck to Friday. Meanwhile the piece is SCREAMING for a big wet slab of it and I know it. I know it. And I still sat there for twenty minutes trying to mix the same red out of alizarin and a burnt sienna that's basically a rock at this point. The last piece I made I did it in like 4 hours because I stopped caring and just went at it with my hands, and it's the best thing in my studio right now. You'd think I'd learn. Apparently I only learn for two weeks at a time. also the tube is basically empty and I'm already dreading the drive to the art store where the guy will look at my hands and know exactly what I've been doing

Studio Life·Sol Reyes·2w

I swept my studio today for the first time in maybe two months and immediately regretted it. There was this gray-brown dust drift under the easel, charcoal and linseed oil and whatever dried out of the turps jar, and it had gone this deep purple-brown that I stood there staring at for a full minute. I literally crouched down with a palette knife like an idiot trying to match it. Couldn't. It's got something in it from every piece I've made since spring, and I can't get it back. Ended up not sweeping the rest. Just that one patch, and then I left it. Somebody told me once you can tell how long an artist's been in a space by the floor and I think that's the truest thing anyone's said to me about this whole thing. Not the work on the walls. The floor. Anyway I'm on my fourth hour on this big one, a woman with her hands over her face, and it's either the best thing I've made or I'm going to paint over it at 2am like always. No in between. There's a smudge of the floor color on the corner of it now and I might leave it there on purpose.

Wins·Sol Reyes·2w

So I've been emailing back and forth with a rep about maybe putting a few pieces in a group show. Small space, back room of a coffee place, whatever, doesn't matter. She called yesterday to talk through it and asked, casual, where I studied. And I said I didn't. Didn't finish high school either, actually, not in any way that counts. There was this pause. Not long. Like two seconds. But I heard the whole thing land in it. Then she goes "oh, so you're self taught" and I could hear the word sitting down in a smaller chair than the one it was in before. I don't know why it got me. It's not new. I've had that same pause with maybe forty people at this point and normally I just move through it. But I sent her the images after and stared at the ceiling for like an hour, one of the big charcoals, the one where the hands are doing more than the face is, and I kept thinking, does she actually see it or does she see the gap. Here's the thing that's actually sitting on me. I don't know if I want to be in the show if she says yes now. Because I don't want to be the story. I want the drawing to be the story. Anyway I said yes to the call and framed the date like it was nothing. It's next Tuesday. I'll report back.

Wins·Sol Reyes·2w

I've been fighting this piece since March. Charcoal on paper, 40x60, my mother at 29, which is two years younger than I am now. I used a photo I hadn't looked at in probably a decade, one where she's laughing with her whole face and you can't tell anything was wrong yet. Drew it four times. Burned the second one, actually put it in the fire pit out back, which felt dramatic and then felt correct. The thing that finally did it was stopping trying to make her look like the photo and just drawing the mouth from memory. Her real mouth, the one she got when she was tired. Not the smile. I cried a little, which is embarrassing to type but there it is. It's hanging now. Cheap black frame from the craft store, nothing fancy. And every night I get up around 3 to pee and walk right past her face in the dark and I still don't know if it's good. But it's UP. It's on a wall, in my house, where people will see it. Some work you make to show people and some work you make to put something down. This one was the second kind and I'm only now figuring out that counts as a win too.

General·Sol Reyes·2w

Sold a big charcoal piece Friday. Woman cried when she saw it, said it was her sister. I stood there nodding like yeah. yeah. and inside I was already gone from it. Not because of her, because that's what happens the second money changes hands. It stopped being mine. Now it's a thing on her wall I'll never touch again and I've been in a foul mood for three days. Meanwhile there's a half finished oil on the floor I can't look at because I love it too much and I know I'll wreck it. Two figures, one holding the other's face. Spent 30 bucks on burnt umber for it which would be fine if I hadn't already spent 30 on burnt umber last month and lost the tube. My studio is basically a landfill with good lighting. Anyway I think the good ones are the ones you can't stand to finish because finishing means it's done deciding and you have to find out if it's real. Sellable is a different feeling from good. I'm not sure they've ever lined up for me once.

Gallery Outreach·Sol Reyes·3w

My first yes was a barber. I'm not joking. I'd been carrying a portfolio around for weeks, getting the polite nod, and one day I'm sitting in a chair getting my hair cut and the guy behind me just goes "wait, YOU do that?" and points at a photo I'd left open on my phone. Two weeks later nine charcoal pieces were up between the mirrors. People got their fades with a screaming face staring at them. I still think about it. The guy who cuts hair said yes before any gallery even looked at me. So where did YOUR first yes come from? A cafe, a friend's wall, a dentist, your mom's coworker, a bar you drink at. Anywhere counts. The less it looked like a gallery the better, honestly.

Marketing & Social·Sol Reyes·3w

I painted over a self portrait in November. Full blackout, then I rebuilt the whole thing in about four hours, wrong on purpose, ugly around the mouth. I posted it at like 1am expecting nothing. It's now the only piece I've sold twice. First print buyer was a guy in Dublin who said it "looked how grief feels in your shoulders." Then a woman in Lyon bought the original. Meanwhile the two pieces I spent six weeks on, glazed and reworked and babied? Crickets. One of them is still leaning against my radiator. I'm not saying everyone should post the worst thing they make. I'm saying I had my "good" work and my true work and I could not tell them apart until strangers did it for me. I was cropping out the hand that shook because I thought the shaking was a flaw. Still don't fully know what to do with that. I keep making careful things and hating them and hating myself a little for making them careful. Also I stopped scheduling posts. I used to sit on a piece for a week "timing" it right. Now it goes up the second it comes off the easel, wet, glare in the corner, whatever. Sales went up. Not a ton. Enough that I noticed.

Rants & Vents·Sol Reyes·3w

Bought a tube of cadmium red light today. $60. Sixty dollars for something the size of my thumb. The guy at the counter said it and I said "sure" like I wasn't doing math on my electric bill in my head the whole walk home. And now it's on the shelf and I haven't opened it. Because the second I squeeze it out I have to make something WORTHY of it. That's the trap. Cheap paint I'll sling around and ruin a canvas and laugh. This thing I'm treating like it's got my dead grandmother's ashes in it. I know exactly what it's for. There's a figure I've been circling for weeks, this slumped shoulder, and the whole thing needs one hot red that burns. That's what I bought it for. But my hand won't cut the tip off the tube. Anyway it's been sitting there four hours. It watched me eat dinner. I think we're becoming friends.

General·Sol Reyes·3w

Somebody bought the big charcoal from the March series. The one of my mother's hands. She paid full asking, no haggling, which honestly made it worse because it meant she actually wanted it. I sat in the car after and cried like an idiot, then came home and started a new one same size. Same hands. I don't know how people do this long term. Do you eventually stop feeling like you're amputating something? Because I've sold maybe twenty pieces now and every single time I hand it over I have this split second where I want to say actually no, never mind. You're supposed to be glad. I AM glad. Rent is paid. But there's a version of that drawing that only existed on my wall and now it's in some stranger's dining room and I'll never see it again. Anyway. Making it again. Bigger.

Gallery Outreach·Sol Reyes·3w

Alright. So the way I got my first show was basically an accident. A guy saw one of my charcoal pieces sitting in the back of my truck outside a coffee shop, asked if it was for sale, turned out he knew a gallery owner. That is the entire story. Zero strategy, pure dumb luck, and I still feel weirdly guilty about it like I skipped a line. So now I'm trying to do it the actual way, on purpose, and I have no idea what I'm doing. There's a space near me I really want to show in. I sent an email with like 40 images attached (was that too many? probably too many) and I've heard NOTHING for three weeks. Meanwhile a friend keeps telling me to just walk in with a piece under my arm and ask to talk to someone, which sounds insane to me but also kind of right? So tell me how you actually do it. Email with a link first? Walk in cold? Instagram DM? Show up to openings and wait for someone to talk to you? And how long do you wait before you follow up, because I'm at the point where I'm refreshing my sent folder like a lunatic. Bonus points if you tell me the one thing you did that actually worked, vs the thing everyone tells you to do that did nothing.

Gallery Outreach·Sol Reyes·4w

I'll go first. My first gallery was a coffee shop that hung local work, and I got in because the owner saw a charcoal piece I'd taped to the wall at a friend's party and just... asked. No submission, no email, nothing. I said yes so fast I didn't even ask what the cut was. Turned out to be 50/50 and I was just thrilled somebody wanted to hang it lol. Now I'm trying the actual grown-up route, emailing real galleries, and I have no idea what I'm doing. So tell me how yours happened. Cold email? Walk-in? A friend of a friend? Got rejected 40 times first? I want the real story, not the polished one. The messier the better honestly.

Pricing·Sol Reyes·4w

150. A3, charcoal on toned paper, took me nine hours over two sittings. That was my number because she's a friend from the old days and she was crying in my kitchen when I showed her the first pass and I heard myself say "don't worry about it, 150." She tipped me 30 and brought me coffee twice. The piece is on her wall now and it's good. It's actually good. I'd put it at 700 if a stranger walked in. Probably 900 in a gallery, but that's a fight I'm nowhere near winning yet. What actually gets me is that this is the third one. Same friend group, same "oh you should do one of my mum," same me dropping the number before I've even finished the sentence. I do it because I'm scared they'll say no, and then I'm salty for a week about being asked at all, which is insane because I'm the one who priced it. My teacher-free education did not cover this part. I can put a mouth on a face that makes people go quiet but I cannot say the number without my voice doing a thing. Anyway. If anyone's cracked this, what do you actually say, out loud, in the room, when it's someone you love and the number is five times what you're about to say.

General·Sol Reyes·4w

Started the big charcoal at 8, meant to just tighten the shoulder line, and then I look up and it's 10:40 and I've drawn and redrawn the same left hand maybe eleven times. Erased it so hard there's a hole in the paper now. Real hole. You can see the wall through it. And here's the thing, the hand is the best it's been. Not because I got it right, because I finally stopped trying to get it right. Around the ninth pass I quit measuring and just put down what the arm was DOING, the weight of it, and it landed. Of course it did. Soon as I stopped auditioning it. But now the paper's torn and I have to decide if I lean into the hole or mount it and pretend it's not there. Part of me wants to leave it. The drawing survived something, you know? The hole is part of the sentence now. Anyway I've got charcoal under my fingernails and I smell like fixative and I've got to go buy more paper. What do you all do when the surface gets wrecked but the piece is finally alive. Fix it or let it show.

Studio Life·Sol Reyes·4w

Not a metaphor. The left can kept sliding off when I tilted my head down to work, so I put packing tape over the band. Looked insane. Stayed on. 9 hours on one piece. The same playlist on repeat the whole time, one song probably 30 times. I don't hear it after a while, it just keeps the part of my brain that second-guesses things busy so the hands can do whatever they want. The piece is a face, close, mouth open, and I kept going back in with charcoal after the oil was already down, which is the wrong order and I know it's the wrong order and I did it anyway. Something about the way charcoal sits on top of wet oil, it goes muddy and grey and dead in a way that's kind of perfect for what I'm trying to say. My teacher would've lost their mind. I don't have a teacher. That's the whole point. Anyway it's 2am and I still have paint on my hands and I'm not going to shower because I want to look at it one more time before I sleep and I know that's the trap, tomorrow I'll hate it. Doesn't matter. Right now it's the best thing I've made and I'm not going to ruin that by being reasonable about it. Who else works with the same song on loop? I need to know I'm not the only one doing that.

Wins·Sol Reyes·4w

Ok so. I sent the email. The one to the gallery on Grand that I've walked past probably 40 times with my nose pressed against the glass like a dog. I had the draft sitting in my phone since March. MARCH. Every time I'd open it I'd find something wrong with a photo or a sentence and close it again. Today I just attached the three charcoals, the big one on the brown paper that took me 11 days, typed "hi, I'm Sol, self taught, here's my work" and hit send before I could think. Then I put my phone in a drawer and went and scrubbed my palette for 20 minutes for no reason. My hands were actually shaking. Which is insane right?? It's an email. But that draft was basically a little box where I kept all the reasons I'm not a real artist and it felt like mailing that box to a stranger. No idea if anything comes of it. Doesn't matter tonight. It's out of my phone and into the world and I'm gonna go make something ugly and big to celebrate. If you've got a thing sitting in drafts, this is your sign, send the stupid thing.

Studio Life·Sol Reyes·4w

There's a spot under my easel where I've been dropping the dead ones. Little stubs, too small to hold anymore, maybe an inch of charcoal left. I've got a coffee tin full of them and I keep telling myself I'm going to crush them down and make ink or something. I never do. I just keep adding to the pile. Same thing with paint. I scrape the palette onto the same corner of the drop cloth every night and the canvas underneath has gone this muddy gray-brown that is honestly better than anything I've painted on purpose this month. I'm half tempted to cut it out and stretch it. Do you all keep the residue or am I just sentimental about garbage. Because I genuinely think the byproduct of making is more honest than the finished thing most days. Working on a big one right now, a full figure, and I've scraped her back twice already. Third layer is finally doing something. The floor remembers the first two.

Studio Life·Sol Reyes·1mo

There's a layer of charcoal dust down there, thick enough that if you step wrong you slide. My friend came by Saturday, took one look, and started to sweep. I yelled. Actually yelled, like she was about to throw out a box of my mail. She doesn't get it. That dust is the whole week. Every time I dropped a stick, ground one down to nothing trying to find the edge of a jaw, that's a mark on the floor. I work kneeled down half the time, big sheets on the ground, and the charcoal just rains off. There's a gray ghost of a shoulder smeared into the concrete that I've stepped over for three days without thinking. Swept studio = nothing happened in it. That's my rule and I know it's a dumb rule. Anyway I've been on this one face since Tuesday and I keep losing the mouth. Six hours today and the mouth is still wrong. It's the kind of wrong you can't see till you stand up and walk away, and by then the light's gone. Gonna go stand really far back from it now with a cigarette I'm not supposed to be smoking anymore.

Rants & Vents·Sol Reyes·1mo

There's a canvas on my wall right now with a jawline I've gone over so many times it's gone grey. Charcoal on top of charcoal on top of charcoal until the paper's got that slick shine where it stops taking anything at all. And I kept going. Kept saying "one more pass, the angle's just a little off" like the angle was ever the problem. It wasn't. I know it wasn't. The whole piece came out of the gut in twenty minutes last week and it was RIGHT, and then I got scared of it and started fixing. Now it's safe and dead and I've spent 45 minutes I'll never get back sanding the life off it with an eraser. I do this every time I get close to something real. Get scared, reach for the pencil, tidy it up. My old art teacher would say work the whole thing not the eye. I never had an old art teacher. I taught myself and I taught myself this habit apparently, sitting alone in a room deciding a thing I made is too much and dialing it down till it's polite. Anyway. It's 11pm. I'm either going to repaint the whole face over in one go and ruin it properly, or leave it til morning and hate it either way. Leaning toward ruining it properly. That's the only one that ever turns into anything.

Marketing & Social·Sol Reyes·1mo

Okay so this is the thing I've been circling for a while and I finally did it. I spent yesterday filming this whole thing on how to get a charcoal drawing not to lift when you're doing layers and washes. Setup, voiceover, the little tips, all of it. Edited down to like 40 seconds. It was fine. It was GOOD actually. Clean. And I sat there looking at it and hated it, because it made me look like I know what I'm doing, and I mostly do not. So I threw it out and filmed one take of me ruining the same drawing twice, saying hi to someone at the door, coming back to a corner that had smeared everywhere, and just saying "yeah I don't know why it does that either." No music. No cutaways. Put it up. It did 40k views overnight, which for me is like 10x anything I've posted. 300 comments. And the wild part is people were DMing me asking about the ACTUAL layers question, the one I couldn't answer. Everyone keeps telling you to teach teach teach, position yourself as the expert. I don't know. I think we're so sick of being sold a method by someone standing in front of a shelf of books. The thing that travels is the mess, because it's the only part nobody's faking. I'm not going to turn this into a whole strategy. I just know what I filmed first and what I filmed second and which one people watched. Anyway. Small win. Back to the drawing that's currently annoying me.

Rants & Vents·Sol Reyes·1mo

Not low. OUT. And the guy at the counter says it like it's weather. "Yeah we've been out of that one for a while." A WHILE. I called ahead. I called. Someone told me they had it. So now I'm standing there in the aisle with my whole Saturday shot, because I can't finish the hands without that brown, the hands are the ONLY part that's working, and I'm supposed to just... swap in raw sienna? Just pick a different brown? Sir I have been painting this same piece for eleven days. That brown is the whole reason it's alive. Walked out with a tube of something called "burnt sienna deep" that I do not trust and a canvas I didn't need, because I'm not leaving empty handed, that feels like losing. It's sitting on the table staring at me. I know it's the wrong brown. I can feel it from here. Anyway if anyone knows a place in this city that actually keeps burnt umber in stock, tell me, I'll drive an hour, I'll drive two, I'll bring snacks.