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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.

So I finally did it. Added 150zł to my base price for a head-and-shoulders pastel portrait. 150. That's like... 35 euro. And I've been sitting here all evening convincing myself I'll never get another commission again. Thing is, I was still charging what I charged when I was visibly worse. I look at my old posts and I cringe. But the fear that people were only tolerating the price because they felt sorry for me, that's hard to shake. Like the new price will make them look at my work properly and go "oh, no, not for that." I know it's not rational. I know my materials cost alone has gone up. I just didn't expect to feel this weird about it. Did anyone else feel like a fraud the first time they raised their rates? Does it go away?

I have this piece, it's a landscape with a lot of tiny tesserae, and it's technically perfect, the lines are clean, the colors are all there. But it just... doesn't breathe. It feels flat, like a photograph. I've tried adding more texture with some rougher stones, even some broken glass, but it's not lifting it. Maybe it's the composition, or maybe I need to think about the 'andamento' differently. Any ideas on how to bring life into a mosaic that feels like it's just lying there?

weird thing i noticed about myself. i can paint alone in my flat for six hours and feel like im wasting my life. but the second someone walks past the window and slows down to look, suddenly im an Artist with a capital A, posture fixed, very serious about the brush. is it just me or is the whole thing a bit of a performance and we just don't admit it

So a gallery in my city reached out. They saw my work online. Want me in a group show this spring. This is literally the thing I've been wanting for years and instead of being excited I've spent the last week spiraling. I keep thinking about how I've never been in a studio program, never had a crit, never had anyone teach me how to hang a show or talk to a collector. I don't have a CV. I don't have an artist statement that doesn't sound like a journal entry. And now I'm supposed to show up next to people who did all that the right way. I painted through the anxiety last night and honestly the piece that came out might be the best thing I've made all year. So maybe the fraud feeling is the point? Like if you're not scared you're not pushing it far enough? Anyone else get the thing they wanted and immediately want to run from it? Or maybe I'm just overthinking this.

I did it this morning. Third time I've repainted this interior, same corner of my studio, same grey November light through the window, and it just would not settle. The drawing was off, the values were muddy, I kept overmixing and killing the colour. So I took the palette knife and scraped the whole thing back to a thin brown smear on the canvas. There's this moment after you scrape. The painting's gone, but the canvas has a history now, ghosts of all the wrong decisions. The surface is smoother, there's a stain to work into instead of a white void. And suddenly I can see what was wrong the whole time. The floor plane was tilted. Of course. I don't know if other painters feel this, but scraping down is almost better than a good day of painting. It's a reset without being a blank slate. You keep the mistakes as a foundation. Very few things in life work like that.

I spent all Sunday afternoon on a landscape, trying to get this one tree just right. I think I finally mixed a color for the bark that felt authentic, but then the branches... they just look a bit stiff, you know? It's so close to what I see in my head, but not quite. Anyone else get that 'almost there' feeling and just have to put the brush down before they ruin it completely?

I've been working on a series of photograms of mussel shells, trying to capture their texture and the way the light falls on them. I'm using my usual process, exposing them to the sun and developing in saltwater, but the final blue just feels a bit… dead. It's not getting that deep, luminous quality I usually get. I wonder if it's the paper, or if the light here has changed so much this time of year. Has anyone else experienced this? Any thoughts on how to bring back that vibrancy?

We've been trying to get more structured with our Instagram Reels. For ages, it felt like throwing spaghetti at the wall, you know? Lots of effort, not much to show for it. But this past week, we finally had a sequence of three Reels focusing on a step-by-step process for one of our smaller products just… take off. Like, double the engagement we usually get on any given post, and a noticeable bump in traffic to that product page too. It’s not a huge viral moment, but for us, it feels like a breakthrough after so much trial and error. Makes all the late evenings worth it, mostly! 🙂

ngl i bought this expensive palette knife bc it looked cool and the reviews said it was good for thick paint application. it arrived today and it's basically a tiny metal spatula. like, i could probably flip a pancake with it. it works fine for slapping on acrylic but i'm also kind of offended? lol. anyone else ever feel like their fancy art tools are just... regular tools in disguise?

so i did the math months later and that's like $18/hr before materials. and she was the one who suggested the price, i just nodded. i knew it was low but i didn't wanna be the guy who haggles with a friend. now every time i look at that painting i just see $18/hour staring back at me. i don't even know what i'd have said if i had to name it. 500? 800? feels fake to ask for that. but 200 also feels fake for 11 hours. so i'm stuck in the middle where both numbers feel wrong and i just don't talk about money with anyone i know personally anymore lol

okay this is something i think about a lot because i genuinely don't know what the "right" way is. my first show happened because i was at a group open call thing and one of the gallery owners came up to me after and said she liked my piece and asked if i had more. so basically zero effort on my part, she found me. and honestly it gave me this weird imposter feeling like i hadn't EARNED it because i didn't go out and hustle for it. which is so dumb when i say it out loud but i wonder if anyone else has that? like you get a win handed to you and you feel like you cheated somehow? so what was yours, did you walk in somewhere with a portfolio (i could never, the fear), did you email someone, or did they come to you? and did the way it happened make it feel more or less real?

A couple came to the studio today, nice people, serious look about them. She spent a long time in front of the still life with the copper pot, the one where the light comes through the wine glass. Said it made her feel something. Then the husband asked if I could do a version with "less of that." Less of the feeling, is what he meant. He wanted the same painting but flatter, calmer, more neutral, for above the sofa in the living room. I said no. Politely, I think. Offered to show them other work that was quieter by nature. But he kept pushing, like it was a question of my flexibility rather than the point of the thing. The point being that I spent three weeks getting that light right, glazing the copper until it rang. You don't ask a singer to do the song without the voice. I know commissions are commissions and I do them, happily, within reason. But there's a version of this job where you become a decorator with a paintbrush, and every time a request like this comes in I feel the floor tilt toward it. Where is the line, exactly? When do you say no and mean it, and when are you just being proud and difficult? I told them to think it over. I don't think they'll be back. That's probably fine.

Okay so I finally did the thing everyone says to do and raised my prices, like a real jump, not just $5, and I instantly lost three of my regulars who'd been buying from me since I started selling online. One of them literally said "I'll wait til you come back down" which honestly stung more than I expected it to. But here's the part I wasn't ready for, the people who are buying at the new price are asking different questions? They're not haggling or asking about shipping times, they're asking about process, about what I was thinking with the composition, about whether I have more in that series. The conversations are just... better. And I'm making the same amount per month with half the sales and way less time packing things up. I don't know if this is a fluke or if it's actually how it goes but I keep waiting to feel bad about losing those regulars and I just... don't? I feel guilty for not feeling guilty lol. Has anyone else had this happen or did I just get lucky?

So I've been doing this thing where I quote what feels scary high, trying to push past the old numbers. Last month a woman reached out about a memorial piece, wanted me to work with her dad's old survey maps, some letters, a few other things. I took a breath and said $1,200. She said "perfect" before I even finished the sentence. Which should feel great, right? Instead I spent the whole week thinking I could've said $1,800 and she would've said the same thing. I don't know where the ceiling is because I've never hit it. I'm just guessing in the dark and every time someone says yes I feel like I lost a negotiation I didn't know I was in.

I was working on this piece for like 14 hours straight yesterday, just totally gone in it. Charcoal, big sheet, just a face emerging from black. And I finished it and stood back and just started crying like an absolute fool. Not even sad crying. Just, it came out right. For once it actually said what I meant it to say. My roommate came down and saw me standing there crying in the dark studio and was like "...should I be worried." 😭 Anyway the drawing is good. Like really good. I think this is the first time in months I've made something that doesn't feel like I'm just practicing. It feels like I actually arrived somewhere with it. Gonna try to hold onto this feeling instead of waking up tomorrow and hating it. Wish me luck.

Okay so I've been telling myself for months that I'd approach some local shops about carrying my prints and cards, just small ones, the cute plant shop on my corner, a bookstore I love. And I kept chickening out because sending a cold email with prices feels so much scarier than just posting on Instagram where people come to you. But last week I finally just walked into the bookstore with a little portfolio and asked if they had five minutes. The owner was so nice she almost made me cry?? She said yes on the spot, picked four designs, and I spent the weekend hyperventilating over formatting a proper invoice. Sent it this morning. Then my partner found me on the kitchen floor and I had to explain that no I wasn't sad, this is just what success feels like apparently. Anyway if anyone else has done the wholesale thing for the first time, how long until you stop feeling like you're going to get caught doing something you're not supposed to?? Asking for a friend who is me.

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.🙂

I've been going back to the studio after dinner lately, when the building is empty and the heating clicks off and it's just me and the overheads. There's no good reason for it. I have normal daytime hours like anyone else. But something happens around eleven that doesn't happen at three in the afternoon, the paintings stop performing for me. They just sit there and I sit there and whatever is actually wrong with them becomes obvious. Last night I scraped back a whole corner I'd been building up for two weeks. Big silver-grey mass I was attached to. Gone in twenty minutes. And I could see immediately: it had been dead weight the whole time. The painting breathed again. I don't know why it takes the middle of the night to see that. Maybe because there's nobody to show it to later.

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.