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There's this little stall near Majestic, been there for maybe thirty years, the kind where the guy remembers your order even if you haven't shown up in six months. I've been sketching it off and on for the past year because the light there in the late afternoon is just ridiculous. The blue tarpaulin, the steel glasses glinting, the way the steam catches the sun. Anyway, the metro pillar markers have appeared. Orange paint on the footpath. Surveyors with their tripods. The stall itself is still there but you can see it coming, the road widening, the barricades, the slow disappearance. I painted it again yesterday and found myself being too careful with every line. Like if I got it right enough I could keep it there by sheer effort. That's the thing with painting old Bangalore, na? You're not just capturing something, you're also saying goodbye to it in advance. And you do it anyway because what else is there to do.

Vale, real numbers because I'm tired of vague advice. My last three glaze process reels: 340, 210, 180 views. A story I posted from the studio at 23:40 with a photo of the kiln door and the words "esto va a salir mal, lo sé" (this is going to come out bad, I know it): 1200 views, and 9 people replied asking what I was firing. So the thing that "works" is me admitting I don't know. Not the finished piece. Not the timelapse. Me at midnight, in a dirty apron, betting against my own work. I think this is because everyone can smell when a post is a shop window. And a kiln at night is just a kiln at night, no selling in it. The problem is I can't schedule genuine dread. I've tried. I posted a very constructed version of the same thing last week with nice lighting and a caption I wrote twice and it got 90 views, which honestly is what I deserved. Also my firing did come out mostly fine, one small crack at the foot, so even the dread was a lie in the end. Do any of you post the actual middle of the process, the ugly boring part, or am I just going to keep accidentally making content out of being anxious

I went back to a street in Malleswaram today. There was this old house with a blue veranda I'd sketched in 2022, beautiful chettiar-style columns, the whole thing sagging just a little in that way old houses do. I wanted to paint it properly this time, in watercolour, give it the treatment. Pulled up to the spot and it's a construction site. Apartment going up, probably 14 floors from the look of the pit. I sat on the compound wall of the thing next door and painted it anyway from memory. Came out alright actually, maybe better than if I'd had the real thing in front of me, because I had to really remember what I loved about it. Weird feeling, documenting things as they disappear. But I'm glad I have that old sketchbook at home. At least someone drew it.

There was this old bungalow off Cunningham Road, mustard yellow with these deep verandah columns I must have sketched three times. Beautiful proportion, proper classical. Last I heard a builder had bought it but nothing was happening, so I kept assuming I'd get one more chance at it. Went past today for something else entirely and it's just a pit. Not even a construction site yet, just an excavated hole with a hoarding. I stood there like an idiot for ten minutes. I have the sketches. That's the thing that keeps me going at it, but also the thing that stings a bit. Because the sketch is lovely and someone else will see it later and think oh, what a charming old house, what a nice moment in time. They won't feel the actual loss. The paper keeps the building but it can't keep the fact that it used to be someone's home, with someone's washing on the line and a dog that barked at me the first time I set up my stool outside the gate. I don't know where I'm going with this except that drawing things as they vanish is a strange job to have chosen. Some days it feels like the only honest thing I do. Other days it feels like taking photographs at a funeral and calling it art.

Kid came to the workshop Tuesday, wants to learn mosaic, great. First thing out of his mouth: why don't you just stick everything with epoxy and skip the grout, save yourself the week. I stared at him for a second. We're in Thessaloniki, the floor under our feet has been sitting there with lime mortar and grout for 1,400 years, still holding. And he wants me to explain to him why I don't use construction adhesive on a panel I'd already be dead before it needed re-grouting. I get it, nobody teaches this stuff anymore, it's not his fault. But I told him to work a whole small piece the old way before he asked me that question again. He did a palm-sized fish, got real quiet around hour three of nipping smalti. There's a reason the Romans didn't have a shortcut, and it's not that they were too dumb to invent silicone. I'm not saying grout is sacred. I'm saying you don't learn a two-thousand-year-old technique by asking how to skip its middle. He's back tomorrow. We'll see.

I spent yesterday cutting back old grout on a piece I'm reworking and I swear I'm still finding dust in places I didn't know I had. Inside my watch. In the crease of my notebook. My cats are sneezing. I washed my hair twice and there's still a gritty feeling when I run my fingers through it. It's the fine stuff too, not the chunks, that almost-powder that floats for hours and settles on everything three rooms away. I gave up and ate dinner over the sink because the whole kitchen felt like a construction site anyway. Does anyone else just surrender to it? Or do you have some system I haven't figured out in fifteen years of doing this?

There's this one mechanical pencil from my architecture days, 0.3mm, must be fifteen years old now. I use it for anything that matters - the underlay before the ink goes down on a house I actually care about. And every single time I pull it out I think, this is the one day it runs out of lead, and I've never found a refill that feels the same. I keep a whole stash of cheaper 0.5s for sketching out ideas that'll probably get binned anyway. It's not rational. The sentimental value of a pencil is genuinely stupid. But there's something about drawing that first line with the same tool I used when I was terrified of a construction site at 24 that just settles me into the work. Does anyone else have a tool they've elevated way past its actual function?

There's a construction site visible from my studio window and honestly it's become part of my reference collection whether I like it or not. Two months ago they knocked down this beautiful old bungalow with a veranda and those arched windows, the kind nobody builds anymore. This morning I looked up and the new tower is already at the fourth floor. I've done three sketches of the same view at different stages and I think I'm accidentally documenting the city disappearing in reverse. The workers start at 6am, before the light is even good. I've started timing my chai break to when they break too, mostly because the sound of all that hammering stops and I can finally hear myself think. I keep telling myself I should go draw the older house further down the street before it goes too. But I keep putting it off, same way I keep putting off a lot of things. Maybe that's the real habit to break, na?

We've had three weeks now where the studio hits 32° by noon. I can't open the skylight without letting in the construction dust from the building next door, so I've been working with the door propped and a fan that just moves the hot air around. The cold wax medium behaves completely differently. It's soft before you even put it on the palette. The layers that should take three days to set are still tacky after a week. I had a piece I was building up, white over warm grey, and I went to scrape back and the whole top layer came off like butter. Ruined it. Or maybe it's a different painting now, I don't know yet. I've been mixing the wax a little stiffer to compensate but then it drags on the knife and I lose the gesture I want. There's no solution, really. You just adapt and the work becomes what the weather lets it be. What I actually mean is: I hate summer in the studio but I also kind of need it, because the winter work comes out too controlled and I don't realise that until July shows me what I was missing.

so a friend looked at three of my paintings side by side yesterday and goes "why do they all have the same hands" and now i can't unsee it. not the same pose, the same literal construction. same two finger shapes, same knuckle placement, same way the thumb sits. i've been drawing the same hand for years and thought i was just consistent. tried to fix it today by doing studies from life photos and every single one came out looking like the same hand wearing a different sleeve. it's like my brain has one hand file and refuses to overwrite it. anyone else have the one body part they just... can't vary? i'm not sure if i should fight it or lean in and make it a thing. it's honestly a little freeing to know my one move is hands lol