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Early on, a gallery told me my work would sell better if I made editions, numbered prints, multiples, something they could move more of. I understood the logic, but cyanotypes are so much about the single moment, the sun that day, that particular seawater, the way the paper dries. I couldn't make myself do it. I said no and walked away, and it took me a while to feel sure about that decision. What's the thing a gallery asked you to change about your work that you wouldn't, or maybe should have, and how did you know?

A museum shop in Vienna picked up a small edition of my screenprints for their retail. I was thrilled, museum shop, right, that feels like validation. They paid €150 per print, wholesale. I sold them 20. I did the math yesterday because I was avoiding something else. Each print takes me about four hours from exposure to final trim, not counting the drawing time before that, not counting the screens I burned and then rejected, not counting the test proofs. So €150 for roughly six hours of work per print if I'm being generous about what counts as labour. That's €25 an hour if nothing goes wrong. Something always goes wrong. I'm not saying the museum shop ripped me off. That's just the going rate, they were fine to deal with. But I sat there thinking: I have an MFA, I've been doing this fifteen years, and I'm making €25 an hour selling to an institution that will mark it up to €400 and call it affordable art. And I said yes because I was flattered they asked. I don't know what the right number is. I just know that the gap between what feels good for the ego and what's actually sustainable keeps getting wider and I keep choosing the ego.

I spent six hours yesterday printing the same screen 85 times and somewhere around batch four I started having full conversations with myself out loud. The kind where you catch yourself and think, who am I talking to. Everyone warns you about the technical disasters. Misregistration, bad pull, ink drying on the mesh. Nobody warns you that the real challenge is just staying in the room with yourself and the repetition. It's almost monastic. Or maybe just lonely. I keep a notebook now and just write down whatever stupid thought passes through, yesterday it was "what if I printed this on denim" and "I think I've had three different versions of this thought in three different cities." Anyway. 85 prints, one registration error. I'll take it. But my god the silence gets loud.

I spent years tweaking my website. Better photos, cleaner navigation, more process shots, less process shots, SEO keywords my friend who works in tech kept telling me to use. And I'd get maybe three inquiries a month, usually from students asking about internships I don't offer. Two months ago my domain expired and I just... didn't renew it. Put together a single PDF with recent work, editions, prices in a table, and my email at the bottom. It's ugly. It's just a document. I send it to people who DM me or write. That's it. And somehow this feels more honest? Like the website was performing professionalism for nobody in particular, and the PDF is just me handing someone what they asked for. I've sold more prints in the last eight weeks than in the previous six months of having a proper site. I don't know if this scales or if it only works because I'm a printmaker with edition sizes I can count on one hand. But I'm starting to think the whole "you need a professional web presence" thing was built for a different kind of practice, or maybe a different decade.

I've been selling small etchings for €180 since 2021. Same size, same paper, same amount of work. Three years of the same number while my studio rent in Berlin went up twice and the price of copper plates nearly doubled. Last month I finally raised them to €240. Not a huge jump. Still probably too low for the time that goes in. But I did it. Then a former professor, someone whose opinion I actually respect, saw the new price list and said, in that careful tone, that the pricing was "ambitious." Asked if I was worried about "pricing myself out" of the market. The market being what, exactly? The market of people who think art should cost as much as a nice dinner? I didn't say what I wanted to say, which is that I know etchers in London charging £400 for a similar plate and nobody calls that ambitious. I just said I'd think about it. Now I'm sitting here wondering if I should have raised them more, or if I'm actually wrong. The math says €240 is still a bad hourly rate when you add up drawing time, plate prep, printing, editioning. But the voice of that professor is stuck in my head.

I don't understand these algorithms ji, my son tries to explain but I think it is a different world. For months I was posting reels, using hashtags, doing everything the年轻人 (young people) tell me. And yes some likes come, some comments, but serious order? Hardly. But there is this one WhatsApp group, just a small group of art lovers from Patna and Darbhanga, maybe forty people. One of my old students added me. I share a photo of whatever I am finishing that week, with a price. No editing, no hashtag, sometimes just in the evening with bad light. And from that group only, I have sold maybe twelve paintings in the last two months. One man came all the way from Muzaffarpur after seeing a photo of a fish motif I posted there. The platforms want us to dance for them. But the real thing is just people who already know what they like seeing. I am thinking maybe the old way is best, find your people, even if it is a small group, and show them your work directly. No algorithm needed.

I've been selling small edition screenprints through Instagram and my site for about a year now. Nothing huge, maybe 15-20 pieces a month. A few weeks ago I started slipping in a free risograph print with each order, just something I'd already made, an extra, no mention of it in the listing. I thought it would be a nice gesture. What I didn't expect is that people started posting the risograph more than the thing they paid for. Like, photographing it on their wall, tagging me, asking if it's for sale separately. The free thing became the thing they wanted. It's making me rethink how I present the work. People love feeling like they discovered something, even if you deliberately put it there. There's something about the "bonus" object that reads as more authentic than the main one, probably because it feels less like a transaction. I don't know, maybe this is just a thing everyone in product already knows. But coming from a fine art background where you never give anything away because it devalues the work, it's messing with my head a little.

I realised something yesterday while I was pulling proofs that I already knew but hadn't admitted: the part I love most is the preparation. The drawing on the plate, the aquatint, the biting, the masking. The thinking part. Then I get to the printing and something in me checks out. I rush it. I'm already onto the next idea. I used to think this meant I was lazy or not a "real" printmaker but maybe it's just that my brain likes potential more than completion. The proof is where everything is still possible. Once it's an edition it's just... fixed. Decided. I have about 40 copper plates sitting in a drawer that are etched and ready and I haven't printed. Some from two years ago. I tell myself I'm saving them for the right paper or the right mood but honestly I think I just don't want them to be finished. Anyone else work this way or am I just avoiding the hard part?

I had a big print deadline, 40 editions for a group show in Milan, and I just stopped posting. No stories, no carousels, no polite little "in the studio" clips. Nothing for almost nine weeks. I was sure my engagement would be dead when I came back. Instead I gained followers. Not a lot, but more than I did in the three months before where I was posting twice a week. And the people who messaged me were actual humans I've met or worked with, not the usual ghost likes. I don't know what to make of this. Maybe the algorithm prefers scarcity. Or maybe when you're not performing, the only people who show up are the ones who actually care about the work. Which is a nicer thought but also harder to monetise, so I'm not sure it's useful. Anyone else had the experience of doing less and getting more?

I have been trying for months to make nice reels about Mithila painting. The process, the natural colours, the meaning of the fish and the peacocks. Good lighting, proper background, all arranged. My son helps me with the editing. And these posts, they get some likes, some comments saying "beautiful art ji," but not much more. Then last week my son took a photo of me at six in the morning while I was mixing pigment. I had not even bathed. Old kurta, hands stained with lampblack. The photo is not good, blurry, bad angle. I told him delete it. He said no, let me post. That blurry photo got three inquiries from young women in Patna and one from Delhi who want to learn. They said it looked "real." One said she could see I was actually doing the work, not performing. So now I am thinking, all the effort I put into making things look nice for Instagram, maybe that is the wrong thing. Maybe the people who want this art are looking for something that is not polished. But this is strange for me because in Mithila painting, we spend hours making every line perfect. The whole point is precision. But online, they want the opposite. I am not sure what to do with this information. Keep posting the blurry morning photos or go back to the proper videos? Both feel wrong in different ways.

I realised this today while staring at a zinc plate I'd already degreased and just couldn't bring myself to touch. With etching you have all these steps before you actually commit, polishing, degreasing, grounding, smoking, and I love that. It's a ritual that delays the moment of actually having to decide something. Painting friends of mine talk about the terror of the white canvas and I kind of don't relate. But I think what I actually can't handle is the single object. The one painting, the one drawing, the one definitive version. Printmaking lets me hide inside the idea of the multiple, if this print fails, there are 49 more chances, and also it's just one of an edition so it doesn't carry the whole weight. I wonder how much of our medium choice is just a sophisticated way of managing anxiety about finality. What's your medium's built-in escape route from commitment?

So there's a new place opened down near the docks, lovely spot, they wanted a big linocut for the main wall, something of Galway Bay, rough sea, the whole bit. I was delighted with myself. Gave them the friends-and-family rate because they're sound and I wanted the work up somewhere people'd see it. €600, I said. Frame included. Generous, I thought. What I didn't do was keep a proper tally of the hours. Carving that thing, it's a big block, 60x40cm, all that water and sky and the little light breaking through, took me the guts of three weeks on and off. Proofing it, pulling the final edition, stretching the paper, framing it myself. Did the maths this morning. Roughly 40 hours all in. That's €15 an hour, and that's before materials, before the frame cost me sixty quid, before the petrol driving it down there. I'm not even angry about it, I'm just looking at the number and thinking, I'd have been better paid stacking shelves. But I'd also have been bored out of my skull, so there you go. Anyway the print looks savage up on the wall. I'll put the price up next time and see do I survive it.

I've been fighting against reels for like two years now. Kept posting finished paintings, good photos, decent lighting, the whole thing. Getting maybe 40 likes and a sale every other month. Last week I was in a rush and just propped my phone up and filmed myself blocking in a sky for about 90 seconds. No editing, no music, just the sound of brush on canvas and me muttering "that's not gonna work" under my breath. Threw it up with a one-line caption. It's at 12k views. I got three commission inquiries. I don't know whether to be thrilled or annoyed that the thing that finally works is me looking like a mess in real time instead of the polished photos I spent actual hours on. But I guess I'm making more videos now.

I've been wrestling with this particular copper plate for weeks, trying to get a specific layered aquatint. Every proof was muddy or flat. I was close to just shelving it entirely. Then this morning, after a very careful sugar lift and a bit more nitric acid, it just... worked. The subtle tonal shifts are there. Feels like a small victory against the material itself. Now to pull the edition.

was pullin' a fresh edition of the hare print this morning, you know the one, the big fella lookin' like he's about to headbutt the moon? Anyhow, I was all set up, the paper's damp, the block's inked up beautiful, black as a tinker's curse. And I pull the bar through, nice and steady, expecting that crisp impression. But instead? The ink's just... gone. Not all of it, mind, but patches, like a badger's dug it up and run off with it. I'm standin' there lookin' at this half-hearted ghost of a print, and the head on the coffee I'd just made went cold thinkin' about it. Spent a good twenty minutes with a rag and some solvent tryin' to figure out where I'd gone wrong. Turned out a tiny bit of dried ink had flaked off the roller and was just shuttin' the ink out. Ah sure, the joys of the trade, eh? Had to re-ink and do the whole lot again. At least the second go was perfect. This one's got a sort of gritty charm to it though, I think. Might keep it for myself.

For about a year I tried to do the Instagram thing properly. Reels, stories, a little carousel about my process. I was showing up, I was consistent. And it worked, in a way, more eyes, more likes, a few commissions. But I was spending the part of the day when the light is right sitting inside editing a video of the light. Last autumn I just stopped. Not deliberately, not as a strategy, I had a show to prepare for and the choice was between making the prints or making the content. So I made the prints. I'm not on TikTok. I don't have a newsletter. My website is a single page with an email address. And honestly? This year has been better than last. Not richer, but better, the people who find me find me through word of mouth, or because someone saw a print in a friend's house, or because they walked into the shop that carries my work. Every sale has a real thread attached to it. Nobody found me through an algorithm and asked for a discount. I don't think this is advice. It's not scalable and I'm not trying to make a living off prints alone, my partner works, I teach a workshop now and then. But the pressure to perform the making instead of just making is so constant that I wonder how many of us are burning our best hours on it. The sea doesn't care about your content calendar.