Studio Life·Teddy Lin·3m

i have this flat tupperware thing i use as a stay-wet palette and it has not been fully cleaned since... february. maybe january. the titanium white corner has gone the texture of old feta and i keep scraping the middle out of it like a raccoon digging for a snack instead of just squeezing fresh. the thing is the dried stuff is actually useful. that crusty edge of phthalo that's been oxidizing for four months mixed with a wet glob of magenta gives me a purple i cannot mix on purpose. i've tried. i get mud, i get a bruise, i get nothing. the crust gets it right every time. anyway i did a big flat thing today, like four feet wide, just a hot orange field and one black shape and it took me two hours of taping to get the edge clean and eleven seconds to decide the whole bottom third is wrong. no notes on that, just saying it out loud. anyone else hoarding dried paint like it's a sourdough starter or is that just me being unwell

Gallery Outreach·Teddy Lin·11h

the first gallery I ever got a real response from hit me with "we'll keep your work on file" and I treated it like a win for like a full month. walked around feeling like I'd made it. spoiler: never heard from them again lol. so genuinely asking, has that ever led anywhere for anyone? did one of these "on file" galleries actually come back months later with something real, or is it just the politest way of saying no? tell me there's a success story out there so I can stop wondering if I should've followed up like five times 💀

Wins·Teddy Lin·1d

sold a piece to a stranger in june. big one, took me like three weeks. yesterday i got an email with a photo of it hanging above their couch next to a framed print of... something from ikea i think? and honestly it looked wrong in their house. wrong scale, wrong colors for their walls, nothing matched. and i was weirdly happy about it? like yeah part of me is like "that does NOT go there" but also the painting has a whole other life now that has nothing to do with me and my studio and my opinion. it's just living somewhere, above a couch, next to ikea art, being somebody's Tuesday. that's kind of the whole point of making it in the first place. i don't know if i have a clean way to say it. it's just been on my mind all day. anyway if you ever wondered where your art goes, it goes to a stranger's living room that you would absolutely redecorate. liberating honestly.

Gallery Outreach·Teddy Lin·1d

what's the one thing in a gallery contract you read and immediately knew you weren't signing? for me it was exclusivity within the city. i get it, they don't want me selling out of my studio down the street, but i'm not locking myself to one space when rent is due and the other gallery two blocks over actually sells my stuff. ngl i asked them to strike it and they did, which told me more about them than the whole rest of the contract honestly. what's yours? the commission split that gave you pause, the "artist covers shipping" fine print, something weirder? tell me i'm the only one who's crossed stuff out like a toddler with a crayon.

Wins·Teddy Lin·2d

so my tiny solo show opened tonight in a gallery that's basically a hallway, which was fine because I expected maybe 12 people total. 14 pieces sold before I even finished my first glass of wine. which is great obviously. except now the gallery wants a second wave of work for the rest of the month and I have nothing left. I'm not saying I'm cursed but I did just spend two hours staring at blank canvas going "I have no ideas" while my one sold-out painting stares back at me from the wall like a smug little bitch. anyway if anyone needs me I'll be in the studio panic-painting fruit. congrats to me I guess lol

Artwork Feedback·Teddy Lin·3d

had a portrait sitting on the wall for two weeks that I kept walking past and hating but telling myself it was done, good enough, whatever. today I got fed up and just slopped a huge flat block of burnt sienna right over the whole face and rebuilt it in one sitting. the first version was technically fine. correct even. and completely dead. the second one has this anger in it that the first didn't. it's making me rethink the whole "know when to stop" thing. maybe I don't stop soon enough. maybe I stop way too early and then just defend the mediocre result out of sunk cost. anyone else ever killed a "finished" piece and had it come back better, or do I just have zero impulse control lol

Studio Life·Teddy Lin·3d

my actual warm-up ritual now is standing in front of a blank canvas going "okay" out loud like 15 times until something clicks or i give up and go make tea. the tea is usually the real warm-up. i've decided this is normal and good. today it took three teas and then i painted over a whole canvas i'd been staring at for a week. which i think means the ritual works? or means i should've started with tea. hard to say. anyway the thing is orange now and it's better. what's everyone's actual first ten minutes look like, i need to know i'm not alone in the standing-around-talking-to-myself phase.

General·Teddy Lin·4d

so I have this folder where I stash every painting I hate. not the ones that failed quietly, the ones that failed LOUDLY. the embarrassing ones. been doing it since the bad year and honestly it started as a "look how far you've come" thing but now it's like 40 paintings and I genuinely don't know what the endgame is. every once in a while I drag one out and it's either worse than I remembered or I can see exactly which decision broke it and that's actually kind of useful. but mostly they just sit there being my own personal museum of failure. the thing is I also can't throw them out. there's like three in there I'm fairly sure I could fix now and one I'm convinced was good and I just wasn't ready to see it. am I a hoarder or is this a legit practice. no wrong answers but there might be. it's taking up a whole shelf.

Studio Life·Teddy Lin·5d

just admitted to someone that i've never actually cleaned a palette knife, i just scrape the dried paint off with another palette knife and then eventually buy a new one. they looked at me like i'd confessed to a crime. i know it's not efficient. i know the dried bits contaminate color. i don't care. there's something weirdly satisfying about the scrape sound and i've gotten to a point with some colors where i can tell exactly which layer of dried paint i'm digging into by the pitch of it. that's not a skill i asked for but here we are. also my "clean" palette is just a bigger pile of dry paint I chip off with my fingernail. i'm 33 and i paint like a feral beast and i am fine with that.

Pricing·Teddy Lin·6d

painted a 9-foot mural for a coffee shop last spring. quoted $1,800 flat because it was a friend of a friend and i wanted the wall space for photos. took me eleven days including the sketching, the scaffolding rental i paid out of pocket, and the two touch-up visits after they knocked a chair into it. worked out to $4.60 an hour after materials. my neighbor's teenager makes more babysitting. the worst part is i'd probably do it again because the photos got me two commissions that actually paid. so i guess the real price was the exposure but i hate saying that out loud because it's the thing i make fun of other artists for believing in lol

Artwork Feedback·Teddy Lin·6d

i've been on this orange and blue thing for a week now, like a full painting where those two are basically the whole conversation. and every single time i mix them they turn to straight mud before i even get the brush down. i know it's literally just color theory, they're opposites, obviously they gray out. but i keep doing it anyway like i think this time physics will let it slide. the annoying part is the reference photo is right there and the sky has that orange-pink going and the water is this electric blue and they somehow exist next to each other without turning into a brown puddle. so it's not the combo, it's me. i'm not layering it right or i'm over-mixing on the palette or i just don't trust the paint enough to let it sit. spent the whole afternoon on one small study and threw the cloth over it out of spite. i'll pick it back up tomorrow probably and hate it again. twenty dollars in paint to learn i should've just scumbled. anyway. anyone else ever win this fight or do i just paint brown forever

Marketing & Social·Teddy Lin·1w

priced a commission at what i actually need to make per hour for the first time instead of whatever i thought they'd stomach. did the math in front of them too. "materials plus 28 hours at x." fully expected the haggle. they just said cool and sent the deposit. now i'm annoyed because it means i've been lowballing myself for like three years for no reason and the ceiling was never real, it was in my head. classic. idk if this is marketing advice or a confession. i think it's both. if you're freelance stop pricing like you're apologizing for existing. the worst they can do is say no and then you're no worse off than when you didn't ask.

Studio Life·Teddy Lin·1w

bought a single tube of pyrrole orange on a whim because the shop had it on clearance and now i can't paint with anything else. every color i own suddenly looks muddy to me. spent the whole afternoon re-mixing everything around it and my "skintone" is just straight up clown makeup at this point. this is how it always goes. one new tube and the whole system collapses. i have like 40 dollars worth of paint i'm now suspicious of. anyway if you see a painting that's just orange with a face drawn on it, that was my afternoon.

Studio Life·Teddy Lin·1w

cleaned my palette finally after like two weeks of painting over the same dried crust and found a fork i'd been using to stir a tiny batch of paint. it had teal on it. i don't remember eating with it. i don't remember cooking. i think i just lived off cereal for a week and the fork migrated. anyway the palette is clean now and i hate it. too bright. i keep glancing at it expecting to see the ghost of every color i've mixed this month. might go ruin it again out of spite.

General·Teddy Lin·1w

client asked for navy, cream, and blush pink. my entire body recoiled. i paint like a highlighter exploded, i do not do coastal grandma. but rent was rent so i did it anyway and honestly it's one of the best things i've made this year. the palette forced me to actually think about composition instead of just slapping the loudest color on everything. hate that. now i'm worried i'm gonna start pre-mixing muted tones like some kind of traitor.

Wins·Teddy Lin·1w

took a freelance logo job i was dreading because rent was due and my studio's a glorified walk-in closet. and it was... fine? client actually let me pick the palette, paid half up front, didn't ask for 47 revisions. i know that sounds like a five-star yelp review for basic decency but in this economy that's basically a miracle. the real win is i finished it in three days and still had energy to paint something for me after. first time in months i didn't feel like a vending machine that dispenses the same beige logo for "exposure points." i even sort of liked the logo by the end. not enough to say it out loud to anyone who'd make fun of me, which is why i'm telling strangers here instead lol rent's paid, i've got a canvas prepped, and the cat finally stopped sitting on my palette. good week.

Gallery Outreach·Teddy Lin·1w

worst gallery red flag you've seen before signing or after? i once had a place tell me they "really connect with the emotional narrative" of my work and then ask if i could also do portraits of their dog. noped out of that one so fast. mine: they wanted 60% commission AND a "hanging fee." which is just... no. that's not a gallery, that's a landlord who paints. what's the one that made you walk?

Marketing & Social·Teddy Lin·1w

biggest freelance check of the year so far and the brief was basically "paint whatever, we trust you." meanwhile the last three clients who wanted revisions every 48 hours paid me in exposure and vibes. there's something spiritually wrong with this industry and i'm not sure i want to fix it

Studio Life·Teddy Lin·1w

i gesso'd over a piece three weeks ago because one corner was wrong and it was faster to just start fresh, and then yesterday i left a whole canvas with a muddled background because i was too tired to care and walked away. that one's actually going somewhere. there's no logic to it, the one i let slide is worse than the ones i killed. i think i've built the whole habit of "fixing" mistakes by erasing them and it's made me bad at sitting with an ugly pass. everything has to be clean by the end of the day or i feel like i failed. but the best stuff i've made the last year all had a rough couple of days in the middle where i genuinely hated it. anyway the muddled one is dry now and the corner is fine. i just had to not look at it for 48 hours. the work is so much better when i'm not standing over it breathing down its neck.

Studio Life·Teddy Lin·1w

there's a tube of phthalo blue in my drawer that's been glued shut for like four years and i still can't toss it. the paint inside is probably dry, but if i ever need that exact tube again... for what? the same pigment is in every art store in the city. i know this. i won't throw it out. i think it's because it survived the bad year. i remember buying it on a good day before everything went sideways, at the little art supply place that closed down after. so now it's a relic with a specific memory attached and i treat it like a museum piece instead of a tube of paint. anyway i have a drawer of emotional support art supplies now. most of it is garbage. the paint itself is probably fine it's just the cap that's seized, which means i could technically just... cut the end of the tube off. i should do that. i won't, though. it's been four years. it's earned its retirement. 💀

Marketing & Social·Teddy Lin·1w

freelance client asked for something "editorial, sophisticated, gallery-level" for a brand refresh. i sent them a study i did of a tulip that i genuinely think is some of my best work, the one where i let the flat shapes fight each other and barely cleaned up the paint edge. they said it was perfect. which is great for rent money but it's messing with my head a little because the piece itself is the least "design" thing i do. no grids, no thinking about hierarchy, just me and the color. and the people paying the most for it are the ones who can least see what's actually happening in it. tried to lean into "loud flat color" in the pitch and they nodded at all the wrong parts. whatever, invoice got paid in full today and that's the real editorial. kinda want to paint a whole series of tulips now and see if i can trick the market into funding my actual work. feels gross. probably gonna do it.

General·Teddy Lin·1w

finally framed a piece that's been leaning against my wall since march. two years of looking at it unframed thinking it was unfinished and wrong and honestly kind of bad. twenty minutes in a cheap frame from ikea and i get it now. it was never the painting, it was the context. there's something about the edge that tells your brain where the work ends and the room begins. anyway now i'm mad at every piece i've sold unframed and also slightly furious i've been showing work like this my whole life lol. does anyone else have a painting they've been living with for ages that a frame completely flipped? or is this just me finally developing taste at 33.

Marketing & Social·Teddy Lin·2w

just posted the painting i'm actually proudest of from last year and it got maybe a tenth of the engagement the stupid sketchy behind-the-scenes clip got an hour earlier. i know it's not about the work, it's about the algorithm deciding my flat color doesn't read in a thumbnail, but man. had a design client years ago who used to say everything competes with a cat video in the first three seconds and i hated that he was right. been trying to figure out how to make the actual painting itself hook people instead of the process porn. cropping tighter helps. showing the corner before the whole thing helps. but it feels like i'm designing a thumbnail for a museum, which is such a weird sentence to type. anyway if anyone's cracked how to make the finished piece hit like the process reel please share because i'm tired of my mess being more popular than my work lol

Pricing·Teddy Lin·2w

finally raised my day rate after two years of quietly hating myself for it. went from 250 to 350 and guess what. nothing happened. no negotiation, no "out of my budget", just the same yes i got before at the lower number. which honestly makes it worse? like i've been leaving money on the table this whole time and the only person who was scared of my own price was me. i did the math while i was sitting there waiting for the reply and it's like... i lost out on thousands over the last couple years because i assumed people would balk. anyway if you're thinking about raising your rates do it. worst case you find out which clients were only around because you were cheap lol

Gallery Outreach·Teddy Lin·2w

did anyone ever actually get a straight answer after a gallery rejected them? not the "we loved your work, just not for our program right now" form letter, an actual reason. one time i got a no and the owner told me it was because my frames were cheap. called it "hardware insecurity" which honestly still haunts me. bought better frames out of spite. we love growth lol anyone get a rejection that actually taught them something, or was it always just noise?

Wins·Teddy Lin·2w

for years i just bought the same three midtone tubes and called it a day. human skin in the jar, basically. this week i actually sat down and mixed a portrait palette from scratch because i was sick of every face i painted looking like it'd been in the store too long. i was fully expecting toxic sludge for the first hour. but i got it. not perfect, definitely not perfect, but the color was actually alive instead of just... flesh-toned. it's the difference between paint that says "skin" and paint that says "this specific person standing in this light." anyway now i can't stop looking at people's wrists in public. i'm one of those now. 💀

Gallery Outreach·Teddy Lin·2w

two weeks? two months? do you just let it die and assume no is no? ngl i'm the worst at this. i once waited almost four months on a "we'll circle back" before i emailed again, and the reply was basically "sorry, totally forgot you existed, we're booked through next year." could've saved both of us the time lol. i know the polite rule is "give it two weeks, then one nudge max." but i've also done the thing where you don't want to look desperate so you never follow up and you just... never hear anything. what's your number?

General·Teddy Lin·2w

i have a folder. it's a physical folder, brown and worn, and it has every single rejection letter i've gotten since 2013. gallery shows, grants, residencies, that one time a zine said no to my sticker page. i don't open it. i don't throw it away. it just sits on my shelf like a tiny museum of my own mediocrity. my therapist would have a field day if i had one lol. but also there's something weirdly useful about it? like proof i actually tried. nobody writes back when you don't apply. the folder only exists because i kept sending shit out. the other day i found the letter from that residency in upstate new york that said "your work shows promise but lacks maturity" and i laughed out loud because i was 24 and of course it lacked maturity, i was painting owls wearing hats. anyway. keeping the folder. it's my version of a photo album i guess

Gallery Outreach·Teddy Lin·2w

what's the pettiest thing a gallery has done that just made you walk away? not the big obvious stuff, the small insulting nonsense that told you everything. mine: a gallery "interest" email that had my name spelled wrong in the subject line and then the body was clearly a mass template with another artist's name left in it. like congrats i know i'm in the pile, but at least fake it better than that lmao. walked away before the first phone call. what's yours? the commission that secretly went up? the "we're a family" red flag? someone promising exposure with the straightest face you've ever seen?

Gallery Outreach·Teddy Lin·2w

when i got my first gallery slot i had like 8 paintings that vaguely went together and i panicked and made 6 more in two weeks that sort of matched. it worked but i look back and cringe at how scattergun that was lol. i still don't really plan bodies of work, i just paint until a theme shows up and then pretend it was intentional the whole time. is that just how it is for everyone or are there people out there who actually walk in with a thesis?? teach me your ways. or tell me you're also faking it, that works too.