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Okay hear me out. I was at the dollar store because I needed tape and I saw this pack of charcoal sticks, no brand, probably made of regret and sawdust, $1.25 for six. Figured whatever, I'll use them for sketching in my tiny book. I have not touched my good willow charcoal since Tuesday. These cheap little bastards are SO gritty and broken and they do exactly what I want without fighting me. The good stuff is too polite. This stuff is like drawing with a burnt twig you found on the sidewalk. My piece right now has this raw texture I've been chasing for weeks and it came out of a no-name stick that probably cost four cents. I'm honestly a little mad about it. I spent $40 on fancy charcoal last month and the universe hands me the answer in the checkout aisle. Anyway the piece is the best thing I've made since spring. I want to frame it and also light it on fire, the usual. 😭

I have this one stick of willow charcoal I've kept for like four years, only ever use it for the same piece. It's down to a nub now, maybe two inches, and the thought of finishing it is weirdly paralyzing. Every time I pick it up I think this might be the last pass it's got in it. I know that's not rational. I could buy a hundred more for twelve bucks. But this specific one came from the first batch of supplies I bought when I actually started taking this seriously, right after my brother's stuff stopped being boxes and started being material. So it's got history in it, whatever that means. Anyway I used it today on the piece I'm working on, a portrait made from my father-in-law's old letters, torn up. And it's fine. It's just charcoal. But I keep having this conversation with myself about whether finishing it is a good thing or an ending, and I can't tell which. Do other people do this with a tool? Hold onto the last of something like it's going to vanish when it's gone?

Sold a 16x20 charcoal portrait this week for $180 and I finally did the math I've been avoiding for years. 22 hours on it. That's $8.18 an hour and I'm honestly embarrassed I typed that out. The worst part is I knew better. She was my aunt's friend so I did the "family discount" thing before she even asked. Aunt's friend, not even family. I gave away money nobody asked me to give away. I keep doing this. I price from fear. Fear that if I say $400 she'll say no and I'll have wasted the charcoal. But I already spent the hours. The hours are spent either way. I'm not mad at her. I'm mad that I can't seem to stop being the one who underprices myself before anyone else gets the chance to do it. Every single time. Like I'm pre-emptively apologizing for being worth something. Gonna sit with $8.18 for a while and try to actually feel it instead of just doing the math again next time and doing the same thing.

Sold a big charcoal piece for $400 three weeks ago. Was so excited someone wanted it I didn't think twice. Then the custom frame arrived yesterday, $280 with glass and shipping, and I just sat there staring at the invoice like an idiot. So net on that one is $120 for what took me about nine days of work, and that's before any studio rent or charcoal. I keep doing this. I price from "will they say yes" instead of from what the work actually costs me. And the worst part is I'd already told everyone how happy I was to sell it, so now I'm just quietly wearing it. Trying to actually write out my real numbers tonight. Hours, materials, the whole ugly math. If it comes out to $3 an hour again I might scream. Anyone else price from fear and regret it every single time?

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.

Just had the weirdest one. A collector found me through a gallery friend, saw my charcoal work on Instagram, wanted a large piece on commission. I quoted $1,400 half up front, half on delivery. We agreed. Six hours. That's all it took. Six hours of actual work and it's honestly one of the best things I've ever made. Every mark landed, nothing fought me, the whole thing just came out of me like I was taking dictation. And I sat there after they picked it up feeling like I'd robbed them. $1,400 for six hours. That's $233 an hour and my brain short-circuited on that number for two days. I've sold pieces that took me 40 hours for less than half that. The thing is I know the hours don't matter. The years of bad drawings matter. The self-teaching and the burnouts and the figuring it out alone matter. But I still couldn't shake it. I almost messaged them to say "hey that was actually fast, want me to add more?" Like I'd been caught cheating. My therapist asked what I'd have charged if it took 40 hours and I said the same, and she said "so which one is the fraud, then?" and it broke my brain a little. I don't know who priced the honest one. I just know I can't keep pricing by my own suffering and calling it integrity.

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.

Needed to restock tonight and my usual shop was closed so I walked into the stationery aisle of the supermarket and grabbed the budget charcoal, the kind in the flimsy grey box. Figured it would be trash. It's not trash. It's got this leaner, drier bite than my soft stuff and it made me draw sharper than I have in weeks. Less forgiving, so I had to actually commit to a line instead of smudging my way out of a mistake. Now I'm sitting here annoyed that I've been paying triple for the fancy sticks. Also slightly worried I'm the kind of person who romanticizes the cheap version just because it's cheap. Both things can be true. My hands are black and the whole room smells like burnt wood. Good night. ❤️🔥

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?

I bought a new box of my usual compressed charcoal sticks yesterday, same brand I've used since I started, the cheap fat ones that feel like drawing with a burned stick, and they're DIFFERENT. They changed something. The black isn't as deep, the texture is grainier, it doesn't lay down the same way at all. I could tell in three strokes. I genuinely don't know if I'm being precious and it's fine and I just need to adjust, or if they actually ruined it and I need to find a new brand after half a decade. Has anyone else dealt with this? Did you just power through and get used to it or did you switch? I feel like my hand memorized a specific resistance and now it's gone and I'm having a disproportionate emotional reaction to a stick of burnt wood but here we are.

Seriously, I swear I just cleaned the studio yesterday and it looks like a coal mine exploded in here. I've got it on my face, my clothes, the floor, the easel... everywhere. It’s like it has a mind of its own and actively tries to get on everything I own. Any tips for keeping this stuff somewhat contained before I just accept I'm going to live in a perpetual cloud of charcoal?

She's a friend, kind of, we were close in our early twenties and then drifted, she messaged me out of nowhere saying she'd seen my last show and wanted something for above her couch. 30x40, big, which for what I do is a real piece of my life. Two weeks of work minimum, and that's if it goes well, and it never goes well in the middle. I said six hundred. She said "perfect" so fast I felt my stomach drop. PERFECT. Like I'd quoted her for a haircut. Here's the math I only did after I hung up. Charcoal paper that size is 90 bucks a sheet and I'll ruin two before one works. Fixative, newsprint, the two days of just drawing hands until they stop being wrong. Rides to the studio, 40 min each way, and I do not have a car right now. So realistically it's 120 hours and about 250 in materials for 600 dollars. Which is... I don't know. Four dollars an hour? Cool. Cool cool cool. And the worst part is I know exactly why I did it. Because she saw the show. Because she said the word "commission" and I got scared she'd say no and the no would mean the work isn't worth it. Which is the same thing I've done since I was 24. My partner said raise it to 900 and just tell her, she'll get it, she's not going to walk over a hundred bucks. And I know that's true and I still can't make my thumb move to type it. Anyway I'm starting it Monday. 😭

Started a new piece three weeks ago and it's still sitting there looking like a corpse. Charcoal and torn paper, which normally I can work fast on, but something about it just won't click. The composition is fine. The values are fine. Every individual part of it is fine and the whole thing is dead. I keep circling it like it owes me money. Added a wash over one corner yesterday just to break the boredom and now it's worse. I know the fix is probably to just let it sit and work on something else for a while, but I've never been good at that. I want to wrestle it into submission and it's not cooperating. Anyone else hit this wall where the piece is technically okay and that's exactly the problem? Not bad enough to scrap, not good enough to live with. What do you do with those?

I'm so mad about this. Spent $18 on a new block of compressed charcoal from Blick and it just... crumbles. Like disintegrates. Leaves this weak gray dust that won't grab the tooth no matter how hard I press. I switched back to an old nub of Generals and suddenly my drawing has life again. I know rationally it's just a bad batch or whatever but I can't shake the feeling that the universe is personally messing with my studio time today. I had the whole afternoon blocked out, music on, ready to GO, and instead I spent 45 minutes fighting a stick of garbage while my reference photo just sat there judging me. What's the thing that derailed your whole day recently? Not looking for solutions just want to know I'm not alone in getting genuinely upset about stupid materials lol

i'm working on a series of large charcoal drawings, and i swear the dust has a mind of its own. i've tried fixatives, different papers, even just holding my breath when i work, but everything i touch seems to get smudged. it's driving me nuts. anyone else have this problem, or am i just cursed?

There's a layer of charcoal dust on every single surface in here. The radiator, my coffee mug, the window sill, somehow the ceiling fan blades. I wiped the floor yesterday and it looked like I'd been making storm clouds out of pure soot by tonight. People come over and I watch them look at their hands after they touch anything. Wild that I've just accepted this as my life now. You'd think after twelve years I'd have figured out a system but no. The system is I sweep when I can't see the floor anymore and my whites are all technically greys. The funny thing is I love it. I clean the studio for a client visit or a photo and it feels wrong, like I've sanded all the texture off the room. The mess is proof something happened today. Some days the work is terrible but the mess is still there and that counts for something I think. This place is basically a crime scene of me trying.

was cleaning up after a run of prints and my phone died mid-scroll so i just snapped the floor. pile of charcoal dust, torn paper scraps, half a cup of cold coffee sitting in the middle of it. posted it half as a joke, titled it "the actual studio." it did better than any finished piece i've put up in months. 4x the engagement, two dms asking about commissions, one guy asking if he could buy a print of the photo itself. and it's not even the first time. the messy shots, the process shots, the "here's my hands covered in paint" stuff always outperforms the clean documentation of the actual work. every single time. part of me is like, well, this is what people connect to, lean into it. but the other part wonders what it says that the actual art is the least interesting thing i post. like the product is boring and the labor is the spectacle. i keep posting the finished work anyway. i don't even know why anymore. stubborn probably. or scared that if i go full process-bro, the work just becomes content and i lose whatever i have left of the point of it all.

My good willow charcoal ran out at 9pm and I needed to keep going on this piece so I walked to the corner shop and they had this cheap stick, no brand, wrapped in foil, four quid. I think it's for drawing on packaging not art. And it's making the fattest blackest marks I've ever gotten, like the stick is furious about being sold at a corner shop and taking it out on the paper. Should probably be annoyed I spent £40 on the fancy stuff but honestly most of my best work happens by accident or desperation. Give me a surface that might reject me and I show up better than I ever do with a clean setup. Maybe that's the whole thing. Maybe I should stop buying nice materials and just raid the corner shop forever. Not sure the piece is good but I'm lit right now about these marks. That's usually a bad sign. 😭

Took the same 8x8 board and drew over it eleven times. Not a series. Same board. Sanding between layers, or just going darker on purpose whenever a version pissed me off. The last one is barely charcoal anymore, there's so much rust and torn paper buried in it. Someone asked what it is and I said "an argument" without thinking. And that's actually the most honest title I've ever given anything. Feels done. For now.

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.