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Been wrestling with this same piece since Monday. Big charcoal study of a seated figure, hip tilted, weight on one hand. Could not get the left shoulder to sit right. Kept pushing the value darker thinking that would fix it. Made it worse and worse and worse. Finally stepped back this morning and realized I'd drawn the whole arm wrong at the structural level. The angle was off by maybe ten degrees from the start and everything I did after that was just trying to prop up a mistake instead of undoing it. Erased the whole arm down to the paper. Redid it in like twenty minutes. Now it works. Hate that I spent three days being stubborn when the answer was just admit I was wrong and start over. Love that the drawing is finally saying what I wanted it to say. Both feelings true at once. Anyone else ever fight a piece for days only to realize the fix was way simpler than you were letting it be? Or is that just me and my brilliant stubborn brain 😭

There's a still life on my easel I've repainted the same fold of cloth on six times since February. Terracotta pot, two pears going brown, a white bowl with a chip in the rim. Nothing worth anything to anyone. A woman came Thursday to see the big interior I've been struggling with. She looked at it for maybe ninety seconds, polite, and then turned around and pointed at the small study of the pot and asked if it was for sale. I said yes before I'd decided anything. She paid what I asked without blinking, which told me I asked too little, and I don't care. She came back Saturday with her husband to collect it and told me she'd been looking for a painting of a kitchen for eleven years. Eleven years. The whole time I was teaching figure drawing to people who didn't want to learn it, painting almost nothing, this woman was walking around looking for my pot. I didn't sleep well that night. Not from the money. From something else, harder to name. Ten years of telling myself the work was fine sitting in the studio, and then one stranger's hand hovering over the surface, not quite touching, and I understood I'd been lying to myself a little. Anyway. She's hanging it in her kitchen where the pot will get afternoon light, which is where it belonged all along.

I've been teaching a beginner figure class this term and I keep noticing the same thing. The students who are terrified make the most honest drawings. The ones who think they already know how to draw are the ones I have to undo. There was a moment today, a woman in her fifties, first time ever holding a charcoal stick, and she got the weight of the model's shoulder better than half my advanced students would. She had no idea what she'd done. I didn't tell her, just let her keep going. Some things are better if you don't name them too early. I've been at this long enough to know that skill is not the enemy. But there's a confidence that comes before competence that is the real obstacle. Hard to teach around that. You can't ask someone to unlearn their own certainty.

Two years on this one. It was a 400 lb Indiana limestone block, upright, meant to be a figure. I kept carving to the drawing and it kept looking like a boulder with a suggestion in it. Took it down to 180 lbs last month. Dumped the rest in the yard. I've been fighting that block since I got it. Drawings were fine. The problem was I was carving the block I ordered instead of the block that was there. The whole thing started reading different once the mass came off. I don't have a better way to say it than that, and I'm not going to pretend it was a decision I made on purpose. What finally pushed me was a mason I've known since the 90s walked through and said nothing for a while and then asked what the block weighed. I told him. He said well, that's your problem. He wasn't wrong. Delivering it to the client in two weeks if the weather holds.

Eleven days. I know because I wrote the date on the masking tape at the edge of the panel, which is something I do and then never look at until I'm avoiding something. It's a half figure, seated, north light on the shoulder. The drawing is right. The value structure is right. First pass went in lean and quick and it's been sitting there dry to the touch since the 14th, and every morning I come in, make coffee, look at it, and go do something else. Clean a brush that's already clean. Reorganise the turpentine jar. Yesterday I spent forty minutes looking for a tube of terre verte I knew perfectly well was in the second drawer, and when I found it I did not need it. Here is what I think is actually going on. The first pass forgives. You are laying in a structure, everything is still open, the correction is cheap. The second pass is where it becomes a painting, and that is where you can lose it. So I stand there with a rag in my hand like an idiot, protecting a panel from myself. My teacher in the atelier, an old man with very bad breath, used to say the painting is not in the first day. He meant it as encouragement but it has always sounded like a threat. The only thing that has ever worked for me is to start in the least important corner. Not the face, never the face. A bit of the chair back, the shadow under the elbow. Ten minutes of dull work and then the hand remembers why it's there and it stops being a decision. Bof. Today is day twelve, so. Ten minutes at the elbow.

I did the arithmetic properly last month for the first time in years. Not a guess, a real column of numbers. Three weeks on a half-length figure. Not three weeks of painting, three weeks of everything: the drawing, the underpainting, the scraping back, the four days where I sat in front of it and moved almost nothing. Divide the price by the hours and it came to 14 euros an hour. My daughter earns more than that at a café in the Croix-Rousse and she comes home smelling of coffee instead of lead white. The problem is I still quote by the canvas. A 50 figure is 1,800, a 30 is 900, and that grid was set in about 2011 by a version of me who could work faster and had no idea what her materials actually cost. A tube of good cadmium is 40 euros now. I am not going to sit down and reprice the whole grid, because then I have to tell people the new numbers and I already know what two of them will say. So I raised one thing instead. Half-length, 2,000. Told a new client on Tuesday, she said "d'accord" and asked about the frame. No drama at all. I have been slightly annoyed about this for two days, which is my own fault, not hers. The old clients still get the old price until they ask.

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 crack in my studio wall that runs diagonal, from the top corner down toward the window. I've been staring at it for three weeks now. I keep catching myself mid-paint, brush loaded, just tracking that line like it's the most interesting thing in the room. Today I finally understood why. It's the same shape as the vein in someone's forearm I haven't been able to stop drawing. So I've been wrestling with a figure all week and the wall was showing me the answer the whole time. I'm an idiot sometimes. Anyway I traced the crack onto the canvas in charcoal before I lost it. We'll see if it survives. Does anyone else's studio object literally tell them what to paint or is it just me living with the ghosts of cheap plaster.

One of my students dropped out last week, came to the last class without saying anything and just took her things. But she left her best drawing taped to the easel. A hand, resting on a table. Not finished, the thumb was barely blocked in, but the light across the knuckles was honest. Really good. The kind of drawing that makes you understand why you teach at all. I kept it. Couldn't throw it away. It's pinned on my studio wall now, next to things by painters I admire, and honestly it holds its own. I keep thinking about what makes someone with that eye walk away. She was twenty-one. She told me once she was tired of her family asking when she'd get a real job. I didn't have the words then. I still don't. I just know there's a version of that drawing in every atelier I've ever taught in, and I've never once figured out how to keep the person holding on to it.

Found out last week that a watercolour commission I did of someone's ancestral home got flipped. I charged ₹4,500 for it, which took me about three days on and off, and the client apparently sold it to a relative for ₹18,000 not even two months later. I only know because the relative herself DM'd me asking if I'd do another one like it. I don't even know how to feel. Part of me is flattered, clearly the work holds value. But I sat and did the math on my own time that night and it came out to maybe ₹110 an hour. That's less than what I used to pay my auto driver for a round trip to the site. The annoying part is I'm not even angry at the client, I'm angry at myself. I priced it as a "nice thing for a friend's family" instead of as a piece of art that takes skill and years of drawing buildings. Nobody in that transaction underpaid me except me. Still haven't figured out what the right number is but it's definitely not ₹4,500. Worst is I now have two more requests lined up from people who heard about the first one, and I have to raise my price in front of the same circle of people. Awkward.

Working on a seated figure, half-length, north light from a tall window. Left forearm sits in that narrow band of light before it falls into the shadow of the drapery, and I spent two hours yesterday getting the transition right. The drawing underneath is still visible there, a few dark strokes I never covered. Normally I'd paint them out without thinking. This time I stopped. Part of me says leave them. They describe the form better than the finished passages do, they're honest about how the thing was made. The other part says I'm just dressing up an unfinished arm as a decision. I know the answer is supposed to be "it depends," but I don't want that. I want to know what you do when a mark that was never meant to survive turns out to be the best thing in the corner. Do you trust it and build around it, or do you cover it because the rest of the painting isn't built to carry it?

Six years at 2,200 euros for a half-length portrait in oil, one figure, plain ground. I did the math in January: the sitting, the photographs, the drawing, the underpainting, the glazes, the drying time between each one. On a good one, a bit over 14 euros an hour, and that is before the linen and the lead white, which are not getting cheaper. So I wrote 3,000 to five people waiting on the list. Three said yes without a word about it. Two went quiet, and one of them told a friend I had become expensive. I have been turning that over all week, more than I should. What I notice is the 2,200 was not a price, it was an apology. I had set it in 2018 when I was coming out of the years where I barely painted, and I never went back to look at it. The people who left were not paying for the painting. They were paying for the feeling of a good deal. The three who stayed are the ones who actually sit for me and come to the studio and ask questions about the ground. Voilà. I should have done it three years ago and I am still slightly ashamed that I did not. If you raised your prices recently, how much did you raise, and did anyone come back later anyway? I am curious if the quiet ones ever do.

She told me I need to "document the process." So I've been taking photos of the same chunk of limestone every few days. It's a bust. Half the face is still buried in the stone. I don't know who wants to watch that. But here's what happened. I posted a photo of my chisels laid out on the bench. Just the tools. Nothing fancy, dirty handles, worn down. That one got more likes than any finished piece I've ever put up. So I'm trying to figure out what the point is. If the work itself doesn't draw people, but the mess and the tools do, what am I actually selling? Because I'm not interested in selling the romance of being a sculptor. I'm interested in selling the sculpture. Hasn't made me any money yet. Just more people asking if they can come watch me work. Which I don't allow.

Counted them today while I was stalling on a big figure piece. 41 stubs. Some of them are just a smear of black dust in the bottom of the tin and I still won't dump it, because that dust is what I use to push the deepest shadows on a face. You can't buy that. You have to make it by grinding your knuckles down for months. Ordered two boxes of Nitram last week like a responsible adult and then went right back to the nubs. There's something about the last half inch of a stick that makes me draw better. Nothing left to lose on it I guess. Meanwhile this figure has been staring at me from the easel since Tuesday and I've redrawn the left hand eight times. It's not the hand. It's that I know once the hand is right I have to actually finish the thing and then I have to look at it. Classic. Anyone else keep a tin of trash they'd fight someone over

There's a house on Hutchins Road, the pale yellow one with the carved wooden brackets under the balcony, and the board went up last Tuesday. I'd been meaning to draw it for maybe three years. Kept saying next weekend. So I went on Wednesday morning with my book and a flask of chai, fully prepared to be shooed off. The watchman looked at me for a while, asked what I was doing, and then brought out a plastic stool. Two hours. Nobody else came. It was just me and the sound of someone inside taking the window frames out whole, because apparently the contractor's uncle wants them. I've posted maybe forty finished paintings this year. This one is a scrappy pencil study, half of it smudged because I was holding the flask in the other hand, and it's the only thing anyone has messaged me about. Four people asked which house it was. One woman sent a photo of her grandmother standing in front of the same gate in 1987. I don't fully know what to do with that. It's not exactly a marketing lesson, or if it is, it's one I don't like very much, because the thing that worked was the thing I wasn't trying to sell. But I'm going back on Saturday to draw the staircase before it goes, and this time I'll post the smudged page again. Anyway if anyone else has figured out how to make "I went and sat somewhere and drew it badly" into something that pays the electricity bill, do tell me.

A woman asked me about a commissioned portrait, a half figure, pastel on grey toned paper, maybe 30x40cm. I spent two days with the pricing. Not the drawing, the pricing. I looked at what other pastel artists in Poland charge, then at what people abroad charge, then back again, and I landed on 400 zł because I was afraid that anything more would make her disappear. She didn't reply for a week. I checked my phone at night like a teenager. When she finally wrote back she said it was more than she expected and asked if I could do "just the face" for 200. I said yes. And here is the thing I am still turning over. She wasn't rude. She was honest. I gave her a number that sounded like an apology, so she treated it like one. My friend who does ceramics told me she never negotiates, ever, not by one złoty, and she sells out her kiln twice a year. I don't know if I believe it works or if she just has a face that says no. So I am doing the small one now and of course it will take me just as long, because that is how pastel is, you cannot rush the layers and the fixative needs the day to dry anyway. I am not sure if I am annoyed at her or at myself. Mostly myself, honestly. I wrote 750 on the next enquiry and I have not sent it yet. It is sitting in drafts since Tuesday.

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. ❤️🔥

For eleven years I charged 3,200 euros for a portrait, half-length, one figure, hands extra if they wanted hands. Eleven years, same number. It stopped being a price and became a fact of nature, like the weather in Lyon in February. Last autumn I did the calculation properly for the first time. Drying time with a slow-drying medium, the sittings, three of which the client cancels, the photographs, the drawings on paper before a brush touches the panel, the palette, the varnish, the six weeks of thinking about it while doing something else. At 3,200 I was making less per hour than the man who repairs my frames, and he does not have to be charming for two hours at a time. So I quoted 4,000 to a woman in Villeurbanne. Good project, an interior with her mother's armchair in it that I actually wanted to paint. She wrote back that it was above what she had in mind and thanked me politely. I felt sick for two days. Then I felt fine, and then better than fine. Because I realised the old number was not a price, it was a fear with a number attached to it, and I had been paying that fear in hours of my life. The next one, a man in the sixth arrondissement, did not blink at 4,000. I spent the extra 800 on a better panel and a lot of cadmium I did not strictly need. I am not telling anyone to double their prices. I am telling you that the number you are scared to say out loud is probably the correct one and the fear is just the fear.

I've had this painting facing the wall since last spring. A half figure, seated, hands in her lap. The face went fine, the light through the window went fine, and then I got to the hands and froze, because hands are where a figure painter either knows the structure or doesn't, and I knew I was bluffing. Eighteen months. I'd turn it around some evenings, look at the four grey digits sitting there like something from a mannequin factory, turn it back. Today I wiped the whole hand down with a rag and turps and started again. Two hours, no drawing on top, just building the knuckle of the index and the tendon across the back of the hand, from life, my own left hand on the arm of the chair. And it's there. Not finished, but there. The paint told me immediately what was wrong before: I'd painted the fingers as tubes. Fingers are not tubes. The knuckle is a box with a rounded top and the light breaks on it in three planes. Writing it here because I need it said out loud. Eighteen months of avoidance for two hours of work. If you have a canvas turned to the wall, that thing you keep telling yourself you'll get to when you're better, turn it around this week.

I spent the whole month on one painting of my daughter reading in the armchair by the window, and the calf of that figure refused to be right. Not the whole leg, just the one muscle. I repainted it maybe six times. Each time it looked fine in the first hour and then it was wrong again the next morning. Thursday I finally stopped trying to fix the drawing and instead I looked at where the light actually fell on her calf at that hour, not where I thought it should fall. I had been painting a calf in general. She has a specific one. The whole painting snapped together after that. Not because I finally made the muscle work. Because I stopped working from memory and started working from her. It is so humbling to need forty hours to remember the one thing I tell my students on day one. Anyway. She saw it this morning and said, "Now I look like me." That was the whole month, right there.