i keep a half-finished painting leaning against the wall just to stare at while i work on other stuffthere's this ugly green shape in a painting i abandoned like six months ago that i swear i'm gonna fix someday. it lives on my floor, face-out, and i catch myself looking at it way more than any of the ones i'm actually supposed to be finishing. it's like having a passive argument with my past self. sometimes i'll grab a brush and go at it for ten minutes before i even turn the main lights on. does anyone else have a piece they're not actively working on but also not willing to stash in a closet? just sitting there being a problem.
acrylicstudio-ritualsunfinished-work
i bought expensive paint for the first time and now i can't go backfinally caved and got a tube of golden heavy body instead of my usual liquitex basics and i genuinely didn't think it would make this much difference. the pigment load is absurd. i used half as much and got twice the coverage. feels like i was fighting my materials before and didn't even realize it. problem is now i have 30 tubes of mid paint i don't want to use and a wallet that's about to get a lot lighter lol. this is how they get you.
materialspaintingsupplies
The student who asked me to critique her painting and then argued with every single pointa girl in my studio's open session last night asked me to take a look at her piece. big abstract thing, mostly palette knife, lots of texture. i actually liked the bones of it. told her the composition was fighting itself in the lower left quadrant, too much heavy color pulling the eye down and nothing anchoring the top right to balance it. suggested she either pull some of that weight up or knock the bottom back with a glaze. she goes "i disagree, i think the tension is the point." okay. sure. then why'd you ask? i don't mind someone having a vision. i mind someone asking for help and then treating it like a debate. like i'm not trying to boss you around, i'm just telling you what my eye does when it lands on your canvas. you can take it or leave it, but don't make me defend my own visual cortex lol. i told her "fair enough, it's your painting" and walked off. felt rude but also i'm not gonna stand there and argue about why i see what i see. anyway this happens more than i'd expect and i'm curious how other people handle it. i used to dig in and try to explain myself but lately i just shrug and let them figure it out. saves my energy.
critiquefeedback-culturestudio-life
i paid a "social media consultant" $500 to fix my instagram and i regret everythingtwo months ago i got in my head about "the algorithm" and paid someone $500 for a 90-minute zoom where she told me to: film myself painting (i hate this) use trending audio (i'm 33) post 3x a day (i will simply die) do a "bts" of my sketchbook (it's just bad drawings, that's the whole point) i tried it for a week and felt like i was performing having a personality instead of having one. my engagement went down. i wanted to quit painting. anyway i stopped following her advice and my last post did fine because i just took a picture of a painting i liked and wrote "new one, oil on canvas, 24x36" and that was it. 400 likes which isn't viral or whatever but it's real people who actually like paintings. i think i'd rather have 100 people who like my work than 10,000 who liked a video of me holding a paintbrush to trending audio while making a ~relatable~ face. the math might not math on that but my brain feels better.
art marketinginstagramsocial media
cold email success stories, real onesok who's actually had a cold email to a gallery WORK. not a "they replied a month later saying send more" that goes nowhere. like, a real show, a sale, a relationship. i've sent maybe 40 cold emails in my life. got 3 replies. 1 meeting. zero shows. feel like i'm doing it wrong or it's just a numbers game that i lose at. tell me i'm wrong or tell me your one fluke that worked
cold-emailsgallery-outreachreal-talk
my palette is a crime scene and i'm ok with itjust spent 20 minutes scraping dried acrylic off my glass palette with a razor blade and honestly that's where i do my best thinking. no music, no podcast, just the scrape-scrape-scrape and my brain finally shutting up for once. i used to be precious about cleaning between sessions. thought it meant i was organized. now i just let it build until i physically can't tell what color anything is anymore and then i have a little ritual about it. feels like progress even when nothing else is. anyway my palette currently looks like a dried blood splatter exhibit. very on brand for the colors i'm using rn lol
acrylicpaletterituals
the gallery that emailed me back two years latergot a response from a gallery i submitted to in 2022 the other day. "we've reviewed your work and would love to..." girl it's been two years. i have a whole different body of work. i'm a different person. i don't even like those paintings anymore lol what's the longest you've waited for a gallery to get back to you? and did you still take the meeting or were you petty about it like i was
gallery-outreachgallery-storiessubmissions
i think my studio is actually a storage unit i pay to be stressed inwent in today with a real plan. sat down. stared at the half-finished thing on the easel. opened instagram. twenty minutes later i was looking up whether you can powerwash a tabletop. i don't even own a powerwasher. the actual productive thing i did was reorganize the same shelf i already reorganized last week. so that was cool. three tubes of paint i forgot i had. they're probably fine. they're not fine. the irony is i work better when i'm avoiding something else. gave myself a real deadline yesterday and painted from 10pm to 3am without stopping. today i have nothing pressing and i've achieved nothing. make it make sense.
paintingprocrastinationstudio habits
the worst thing a gallerist ever said to youthe first gallery that gave me a real conversation told me my work was "interesting but not commercial" and i didn't know if that was a compliment or a warning. turned out it was both lol. still think about it years later. what's the most memorable thing, good or bad, a gallerist has said to you that stuck? the kind of line you still replay in your head
artist-experiencesgallerist-storiesgallery-outreach
The post that went nowhere on Instagram is the one that actually paidspent three days on a reel showing my process, nice lighting, satisfying brush strokes, all that. 12k views. exactly zero inquiries. a week later i posted a genuinely stupid photo of a painting leaning against a dumpster with the caption "found this in the trash lol should i keep it", it's not even a good photo. some guy DM'd me within an hour asking if it was available and i sold it for $800. i don't know what to do with this information. the algorithm is a trickster god and i'm just its little guy.
algorithminstagramselling art
the scary email finally got sentsent the email today to the gallery i've been too scared to approach for like a year. the one where i think my work would actually fit but i convinced myself i wasn't ready or my portfolio wasn't polished enough or whatever excuse i could come up with. hit send and immediately closed my laptop and stared at the wall for ten minutes. then i went and painted a tiny ugly dog just to feel something normal again. no idea if they'll even reply but honestly the sending part was the block the whole time. feels like i can breathe different now. if they say no at least i won't be sitting here wondering anymore.
galleryputting yourself out therewins
i bought a $6 clipboard from the grocery store and it's been my best studio tool all yeari have a perfectly good easel. i have a drafting table i found on facebook marketplace for $40. and yet for the last three months i've been doing all my small studies on a clipboard i grabbed from the checkout aisle at stop & shop while buying trash bags. it's just... the right amount of friction. i can prop it on my lap, lean it against a stack of books, take it outside, set it down anywhere. there's something about the lack of ceremony that makes starting easier. no adjusting, no standing up, no "ok now i am in the studio doing Art." just grab the clipboard and go. i think i've made more paintings this quarter than the last two combined and i hate admitting it's because of a $6 piece of bent metal and a spring clip. but here we are. what's the dumbest thing in your setup that you're secretly loyal to
ritualssetuptools
i keep old palettes because the dried paint layers look better than anything i'm doing right nowfound a palette from 2021 in my closet today. dried paint all cracked and layered, colors i don't even buy anymore. genuinely prettier than anything i painted that year. i have like six of these lying around. they're useless but i can't throw them out because they look like little abstract paintings that someone else made and i'm jealous of them lol
acrylicpaint hoardingpalettes
the gallery tour that was actually just the owner's living roomfirst gallery I ever showed with, the owner gave me a tour of the space and it was... her apartment. like actively lived in. dishes in the sink. I should've left then but I was 22 and thrilled anyone wanted my work. what's the wildest thing you walked into thinking it was a real gallery and immediately knew you made a mistake?
the specific color i will not buy a second tube of no matter how many times i run outi have run out of titanium white at least six times this year and every time i tell myself i'll just buy the big tube this time. and then i don't. i buy the little one again because i refuse to admit how much white i actually go through. it feels like buying a jumbo jar of mayonnaise. i'm not ready to be that person. meanwhile i have a tube of pthalo green i bought in 2019 that still looks brand new. i think it's mocking me.
acrylicpaintstudio-habits
the gallery that wanted to "grow" me and I should've rungallery reached out a couple years back, seemed legit, had a space, had other artists I'd heard of. first meeting the owner spent 20 minutes telling me my work was "almost there" but needed to be more "palatable for collectors." wanted me to tone down the color and paint something people could match to their couch. i nodded along like a coward and then just never emailed them back. still wonder if i dodged a bullet or fumbled a chance. what's the biggest red flag you ignored (or should've) in a gallery conversation?
gallery-outreachred-flagswar-stories
Just raised my commission prices and the silence is deafeningfinally did it. bumped my base commission price from $200 to $275 after like three years of telling myself i'd get around to it. two people had inquiries sitting in my DMs. both went "ok thanks!" and vanished into the ether the second i gave the new number. not even a counter or a "let me think about it" just gone lol. i know $275 is not insane. i know i'm worth it. i know the people who actually want the work will pay it. but man that immediate ghost hit different. feels like i just priced myself out of my own market and i'm the one who set the price. anyone else raise a number and immediately regret it before you even gave it a chance to breathe? or is it just me staring at my empty inbox
commissionspricingself-employment
finished a painting and actually liked it the whole way through for oncethis never happens to me. usually by the third session i'm convinced it's garbage and i'm just moving paint around out of spite until something clicks or i give up. but this one just... worked from the start? i kept waiting for the other shoe to drop and it just didn't. it's a big one too, 36x48. neon orange background with a figure sort of dissolving into it. been staring at it dry on the floor for two days trying to find the thing i'm gonna hate about it and i keep coming up empty. feels wrong honestly lol. like i'm getting away with something.
paintingprocesssmall wins
i have 14 half-finished paintings and i started every single one of them this monthngl i think i'm addicted to the first 20% of a painting. that part where everything's possible and you haven't ruined it yet. i'll block in a composition, get the color rough in, feel like a genius for about an hour, and then my brain goes "cool, that one's done" and i start a new one. now i have 14 canvases staring at me from various corners of the studio like disappointed landlords. all of them have like. one good square foot of actually finished work and then the rest is just. potential. rotting. i know the answer is "just push through the ugly middle" but the ugly middle is SO ugly and starting something new makes the brain go brrr. anyone else collect half-babies or is this just my adhd running the show
acrylicadhdstudio-habits
the commissioned portrait where the client sent me a filtered selfie and got mad it didn't look like herso I took a portrait commission which is already rare for me because I hate doing them, and the reference photo she sends is clearly a facetune situation. like the skin is blurred to hell, cheekbones sharpened, eyes unnaturally bright. I paint it as close to the photo as I can because that's what she gave me. she picks it up yesterday and goes "this doesn't look like me at all." no shit. you sent me a cartoon version of yourself and I painted the cartoon. I wanted to say "ma'am that's your face, you're the one who smoothed it into an instagram filter" but I just smiled and said I could adjust some things. I hate portrait work. I always remember why I hate it and then someone offers money and I forget. never again until next time.
clientscommission horrorportraits
the guy who wanted to pay me in "exposure" at a coffee shop that had exactly 4 customers including mesome guy at a cafe yesterday saw me working on a sketch, came over, loved it, said he runs a "curated online gallery" (instagram account with 300 followers). wanted to feature me. for free. in exchange for "exposure to his network." i asked him how many sales his featured artists usually get from it. he said "well it's more about building relationships." so i said cool, let's build one where you pay me. he did not think that was funny. he left me his card anyway. the card had a stock photo of a paintbrush on it.
clientsexposurerants
the liquitex heavy body cadmium red that's separating in the tube like a salad dressingopened a fresh tube of liquitex heavy body cadmium red this morning and the first squeeze was just... clear medium. had to massage it for a full minute before any pigment came out and even then it's grainy. never had this with them before. is this just a bad batch or has something changed over there? i know they got bought by that parent company a while back. genuinely pissed because this is the red i mix everything into and i'm supposed to be shipping these this week.
acrylicliquitexpaint quality
The four-inch scrap of gessoed board I've been using as a palette for three months and it's basically a relief sculpture noweveryone's got their fancy stay-wet palettes and i'm over here scraping bone-dry acrylic crust off this little board with a palette knife like i'm archeology-ing my own bad decisions. the texture is genuinely insane at this point, there's like seven layers of dried paint built up with actual craters where i gouged out a chunk of ultramarine mid-painting. i know i should just sand it down or toss it but honestly i'm attached. it's like a little topographical map of every piece i've made since january. you can see the exact week i went through a burnt umber phase. tell me you also have a cursed palette you refuse to retire
acrylicpalettestudio habits
The Golden fluid acrylic that dried in the bottle and I'm debating whether to chop it open like a tin cangot a bottle of golden fluid raw umber that's been slowly solidifying in the corner of my shelf for like a year and a half. it's not fully hard yet but it's got that thick yogurt consistency where you shake it and nothing moves. i know the official answer is throw it out but i paid like $12 for this and i can still see pigment in there. part of me wants to cut the bottle open with a knife and use it like a paint cake. part of me knows that's insane. has anyone actually done this or do we all just pretend we toss them and secretly keep a graveyard of half-dead paint bottles under the sink
acrylicgoldenpaint
Spent 4 months on a series, sold one painting, did the math and I made $2.14 an hourfinally sat down and actually did the math on the series I wrapped in february. 4 months of painting almost daily, probably 300+ hours total between making the work, photographing it, writing statements, the whole grind. sold one painting out of 12 for $900. after materials and the stupidly expensive frames I wanted for the show... $642 net. that's $2.14 an hour. i looked at the number for way too long and then went and did a logo for a startup i hate for $500 in like 3 hours and felt genuinely ill about which one was the better use of my time. idk what the point is other than i keep doing this to myself and i'm gonna do it again which is either stubbornness or a brain problem lol
art-economicscommissionspricing
the liquitex heavy body titanium white that's been separating in the tube and i keep squeezing the oil out onto a paper towel like it's finebeen mixing with this tube for months and every time i squeeze it a little puddle of clear medium comes out first. i just daub it off and carry on. it's not fine. the white is getting stiff and crumbly. i know the right thing is to replace it. i will not. i have a three-quarter full tube of something that's supposed to be paint and i am going to use every last crumbly gram of it out of spite. anyone else just commit to a bad tube until the bitter end or am i alone in this
acrylicpaint problemssupply hoarding
finished a painting i started during the bad year and couldnt look at for monthspulled an old canvas out of the closet today that i started in like... 2021. deep in the bad year. it was just blocked in with this muddy grey-green i was mixing over and over back then like it meant something. couldn't finish it. couldn't throw it out either. finally figured out what it wanted today. scraped half of it off, repainted the whole bottom third, kept maybe two square inches of the original. it's done now. feels weirdly like i got to go back and tell that version of myself "hey it's fine, you're not stuck forever, you just need to wait three years and paint over most of it lol" anyway. it's leaning against the wall drying and i keep walking past it and going "huh. okay. it's good." feels like i earned that one.
acrylicfinished a thingpainting
i think i'm addicted to buying paint colors i'll never useopened a delivery today and genuinely could not remember ordering it. just stared at this tube of pyrrole orange like it was a stranger in my house. which it is. i don't even like orange. i have never once thought "this painting needs orange." yet here we are. checked my paint drawer and i have three different brands of the same dull green i used exactly once in 2021. my brain saw a color chart at 2am and decided that was the move. the tube is still in the box. feels like a specific flavor of art delusion where buying the thing and using the thing are the same satisfaction to my brain. the paint sits there and i feel like i'm being productive. anyone else's studio budget just... a series of impulse purchases that never graduate into actual paintings? or do some of you have self control
acrylicshoppingstudio-life
i finally figured out why my studio is a disaster zone and it's actually finei realized today that my "studio organization system" is just. piles. five different piles that i know the meaning of but nobody else would survive. there's the "this canvas is getting there but not done" pile, the "materials i bought for a specific idea i abandoned" pile, the "sketchbooks i'm afraid to open because the one on top is from the bad year" pile, the "clean brushes that are definitely not clean" pile, and then just general garbage. it works until it doesn't. today i couldn't find my good palette knife and spent 20 minutes digging through the abandoned-ideas box like a raccoon. found it under a dried-out tube of cadmium red i bought for a series i painted exactly one piece of. at this point i think if i cleaned it for real i'd lose the ability to make anything. the entropy is part of the process. or that's what i tell myself lol
organizationstudio chaosstudio life
commission split, what's normal vs what's actually happeningi'll start: the first gallery that offered me a show wanted 60/40 (them 60). i was so green i almost said yes. dodged that one. what's your actual split with galleries right now? not the ideal, not what they say on the website, what are you getting. and did you negotiate or just take what they offered
