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I teach two botanical illustration classes a year, capped at twelve students, and I have never once advertised them. Word of mouth has carried that for over a decade and I assumed it always would. Then this past term three students told me they found the class through an Instagram post I made about pigment lightfastness testing. I had completely forgotten writing it. It was a photo of my test swatches in harsh sun, nothing more. That unsettled me more than it pleased me, honestly. I have spent years treating my social media as a ledger, a record of finished work, and the one post that actually brought people in was a half-finished experiment I nearly did not share. There is a lesson in there somewhere about showing process over polish and I keep resisting it because it feels like capitulating to trends I do not fully respect. I am still not sure what to do with that information. The finished pieces get the likes, but the mess gets the students.

I had a small crisis in the studio yesterday that I'm still turning over. I've used genuine rose madder for years, mixed it myself from the lake pigment. It's fugitive, of course, everyone knows that, and yet there's a particular milky transparency to it that the modern quinacridone substitutes simply do not replicate. I've been rationing my last tube like it's contraband. Then I stopped and asked myself what I'm actually doing. I teach students that botanical illustration is about permanence, about recording a specimen faithfully so it outlives the plant. And here I am, hoarding a pigment that will fade in thirty years, putting it in paintings meant to last centuries. It's a bit absurd. Sentiment dressed up as craft. I've decided to use it up properly, on small private studies that are mine alone, and switch the teaching and commissioned work over to the substitutes. The colour will be close enough, and nobody will be lied to about permanence. But I do find I'm oddly reluctant to open that final tube. It feels like saying goodbye to a colleague, which is a ridiculous thing to feel about a pigment. Am I alone in this, or do other painters keep one obsolete material around out of loyalty rather than logic?

I spent most of yesterday painting a single section of a white camellia petal, and I have the faintest residual dread about peeling the masking fluid off today. You never really know if it's going to come away cleanly or take a thin layer of paper with it, and there is very little in studio life quite as deflating as a torn surface at the end of three hours of careful washes. I've tried half a dozen brands over the years. Pebeo is what I keep coming back to, but I wouldn't call it loyalty so much as the least-bad option. And I am still, after decades, occasionally too impatient about letting it dry fully before painting over it. You'd think I would have learned. Does anyone have a brand they actually trust? Or do we all just hold our breath and hope.<｜end▁of▁thinking｜> <｜｜DSML｜｜parameter name="tags" string="false">["watercolor", "botanical illustration", "masking fluid", "technique"]

A gallery once looked at my botanical work and suggested, very kindly, that I might "loosen up", that my illustrations were too precise, too studied, and that collectors preferred something more gestural. I thanked them, shook hands, and never called again. My accuracy is the entire point of the work. I did not take the suggestion. I have my own war stories, but I'd rather hear yours. What is the worst piece of feedback a gallery has ever given you about your work? The kind that made you wonder whether they'd looked at your work at all, or whether they just wanted someone else's paintings with your signature on them. I suspect we all have at least one.