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Back when I was still doing a lot of fabrication work for other artists, a friend asked me to weld a gate for his backyard. Nice guy, helped me move a block of granite once. I quoted him basically materials plus a couple hundred for my time. He was happy, I felt good about it. Five years later he wanted a matching gate for the front. Expected the same price. Then his brother heard about it. Then a neighbor. Then I'm the guy who does cheap custom ironwork for an entire neighborhood and every one of them thinks I'm gouging when I finally say no. That was the last time I did a friends-and-family price on anything. Cost me more in aggravation than I ever saved in goodwill.

I finally did it. Went from €80 to €95 for a full day workshop, materials included, seawater hauling not. Two people who'd been coming every month for over a year just stopped replying. Not even a "that's too much now" or a goodbye. Just silence. I know €95 for a day of my time, my chemicals, my paper, the space, the clean-up, I know that's not a lot. I know that. But it felt like a lot to say out loud. And now I'm sitting here wondering if I should have stayed quiet and kept them. The worst part is I don't even think €15 is what stopped them. I think it was the act of me naming it. Like me raising my price broke something they'd assumed about me, that I'd always be the cheap option, the artist who does it for love. And I am doing it for love. That's exactly the problem.

I've been working on a study of Fritillaria meleagris, the snake's head fritillary, and I keep running into the same problem with one particular passage. The grid pattern on the tepals requires a very controlled lift to get those pale chequered marks out of a darker wash, and my usual standby burnt sienna from Winsor & Newton is staining the paper in a way I can't work around. It's a lovely pigment for many things but it simply will not lift cleanly once it's dried for more than about thirty seconds. I've tried different papers, different dilution levels, even switching to a synthetic sienna from another brand, and the behaviour is the same. I know there are artists who pre-wet the area and work into a damp surface to avoid the problem, but that sacrifices the crispness of the edge I need. I wonder if some of you have found a particular brand or formulation of burnt sienna that lifts more cooperatively, or if you simply avoid it for this kind of work and use something else entirely. I am not ready to give up the colour, it is exactly the right earthy rust for this species, but I might have to adjust my method.

Sold a 140x140 oil and cold wax piece to a regular collector for €1,100. Then I saw the invoice from the framer. He'd paid €400 for the frame, plus delivery, plus the wall hanging rig. I did the math on my end afterwards: between the stretcher, the oil, the cold wax, the months of drying time sitting in my studio, and the actual painting hours, my rate came out at around €14 an hour. The frame he chose costs more per square meter than my painting does. I'm not saying the price was wrong. He's passed on two smaller pieces since, he's serious, and €1,100 for a painting that size from a mid-career artist in this country is roughly where the market sits. But there's something slightly absurd about a piece that took me a year of thinking and painting being worth less than the aluminium profile holding it up. The real problem is I'm the one who has to be the one saying the number. The framer never flinches. I do, every time. I keep asking myself what the actual number should be, and the honest answer is I don't want to find out by losing the collectors who made this a living in the first place. That's the trap, and I know it's the trap, and I'm still sitting in it.

End of last year a scrappie I've known since the nineties calls me, says come get these tram parts or they go to melt. Old Škoda 8Tr stuff, brake valves, couplers, chassis brackets. Beautifully worn, that smooth worn metal you get from forty years of use. So I went. Paid him in coffee and a bottle of something. Three months now the crate sits in the corner of the studio and I have not touched a single piece. I walk past it every day. My son came by last week and asked what I'm making with it and I told him honestly nothing yet, and he said so why'd you take it, and I said because it existed. That's a lousy answer but I think it's the real one. There's a difference between collecting and hoarding and I've never been fully sure which side of the line I'm on. I tell younger artists salvage is about deciding what gets to be remembered and then I go and rescue things with no plan because I can't stand the thought of them being melted into somebody's new washing machine. One day I'll know what they're for. Or I won't and they'll go to my son, who will also not know, and then it's his problem. That's how the good stuff moves through the world.

I did the math last night because I couldn't sleep and I think I'm genuinely losing money on every piece I sell. Like a small drawing takes me 4-6 hours minimum, the big ones are 15-20 easy. I use good paper, good charcoal, fixative, all that adds up. $80 for something I spent 8 hours on is $10 an hour. I make more bartending one shift than I do from a whole week of selling work. But here's the thing, I'm terrified to raise them. Every time I think about listing a drawing for $200 I get this voice in my head like who do you think you are. You're self taught. Nobody knows your name. You're not even in a gallery. $200 for a piece of paper from someone's apartment? Please. And then I see artists with less skill (sorry, I said it) charging $500 for stuff that's technically weaker and I get so mad. But also jealous. But also I still won't raise my prices. My therapist says this is about worthiness or whatever and I told her maybe it's just about rent and being realistic lol. But I think about it constantly. Every time I hand over a drawing and take the money I feel a little sick. Anyone else stuck in the "I know I'm undercharging and I can't stop" loop? How do you break it without feeling like a fraud?

Myself Ramesh. I want to say something that has been on my mind. In the old way, we make our own colours. Rice paste for white. Lampblack from the diya. The red from kusum flower or from geru, the earth. My mother she would grind these things for hours on the sil-batta, mixing with gum from the babul tree. The colour sits on the paper differently. It breathes. Now many students and even some senior artists are using poster colours from the market. It is faster. Also cheaper sometimes. But I look at those paintings and the line has no life. The colour is flat like plastic. You can feel no hand in it. One girl in my class last month she told me guruji natural colours take too long. I said beta that is not a problem. That is the art itself. The grinding, the mixing, the waiting, this is not wasted time. This is the painting. But I also understand. The buyers they want bright. They want quick. And we must eat. So I am conflicted ji. I use both now. Some natural for my own work, some synthetic when I must. But I feel a little shame mixing the two in one painting. Like I am cheating my grandmother. Anyone else feel this way about old materials vs new ones? Or is it only me.🙂