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I did a portrait yesterday I was genuinely happy with for once. Soft greys and a tiny bit of terracotta, the skin actually looked like skin. And then I sprayed fixative and it deepened everything by about two values and killed the light layer I had on top. So now she looks like she's in a dim room instead of the soft daylight I wanted. I know you're supposed to test on scraps. I never do. I'm too impatient and then I pay for it. Do you just... accept the shift and work lighter to account for it? Or is there a technique I'm missing? I've tried workable fixative between layers and final fixative at the end and it always changes something. Maybe I should just stop using it and keep everything under glass but then I worry about smudging when I ship.

there is a certain point in the afternoon when the light through my one window dies and everything on the table turns the same muddy grey. it happens around 3:40 right now. i don't turn the overhead light on. i just keep working in the murk, and honestly some of my best marks get made in that half hour, when i can't actually tell what color i'm dipping into. today i cut up an old gas bill from my brother's apartment. it was in a box of his paperwork that i've been dragging between apartments for six years, opening and closing, never doing anything with. the paper had gone that soft yellow. i tore it into strips and laid it down wet, and the ink bled, and now there's this faint "AMOUNT DUE: 84.11" ghosted under a wash of burnt umber. i don't know if that's good or ghoulish. i have never fully decided. the thing i actually wanted to say: i have a rule that i don't clean the studio on days i make something. so there is a stack of cups by the sink, dried gouache on the floor, and a jacket of his hanging on the back of the door that now permanently smells like fixative and varnish. i wore it last week because it was cold and i haven't washed it since and i don't think i'm going to. half of the work is just refusing to put things away.

Ok so I've been working on this one 9x12 of the window at 6pm, the gold hour one, and I've been through maybe eleven sheets of Arches trying to get the shadow on the sill right. Eleven. That's like $70 of paper just to learn that I keep lifting the paper when I want to lift the pigment, which, cool, great, love that for me. Anyway the electric company sent the bill and it's up $40 and my partner was like "you've had the lamp on till 2am every night for a month" and I got defensive for a second and then remembered I also run a hair dryer over every wash because I'm impatient and can't wait for it to dry on its own like a normal person. So I'm out here basically paying to speed up my own mistakes. On my own dime. As a person with no other dime. The thing is the window doesn't even look that different from the one I did in March and I can't tell if that's progress or if I'm just circling. I know the light changed because it's October now. I don't know if I did. Not looking for a fix, mostly just want someone to tell me the hair dryer thing is normal because I'm starting to feel insane about it

been working on the same collage for three weeks and it still looks like a crime scene. layers of paper I've torn and retorn half a dozen times. the photograph underneath barely visible anymore. there's this one corner I keep coming back to where I accidentally ripped through to the board and I've been trying to decide if I should cover it or let it stay. my friend said leave it, it's the only honest part. she's probably right. some days I think the whole point is just to keep showing up until the thing tells you what it wants. today it's not telling me shit but I'm still here.

Finished a portrait last week, charcoal on paper, roughly 40 hours across two weeks because I kept hating it and redoing the eyes. Charged €500. After paper, charcoal, fixative, the framing, and the courier there was about €270 left. That's €6.70 an hour. A barista makes more than that here and they don't go to bed smelling like fixative. And here's the thing that's really chewing on me. The woman who commissioned it loved it. Cried when she saw it, said it was the first thing that ever actually captured her mother. She would've paid double. I know she would've because when I was scared to say a number I lowballed out of pure nerves and she didn't even blink. I keep telling myself I'm still building my name and the exposure counts. But €6.70 an hour for work that genuinely wrecked me to make isn't building anything except resentment. I need to charge what it actually costs me to live and breathe into a piece or I'm going to burn out before anyone's ever heard of me. How do you get over the fear of naming a number out loud and just letting it hang there while they decide if you're worth it? Because I physically feel sick every single time.

Quoted someone €350 for a 50×70 pastel portrait the other day. She paused and said "oh, I thought it would be less." And the thing is, I actually agreed with her in my head for a second. That's the problem. I sat down after and did the real math. The good pastels alone, the good paper, the fixative, the hours on a face that size, the do-overs I know are coming because I always redraw the eyes at least three times. €350 is honestly on the low side of fair. But it still feels like I'm asking for too much. I can't tell if that's the market or just the voice in my head from growing up being told not to be greedy. She hasn't written back. Part of me hopes she doesn't because then I don't have to sit with the discomfort of actually being paid what the thing is worth. I'm trying to hold the line this time. We'll see.

posted a process video the other day, just charcoal and me being clumsy with a fixative, no finished work, nothing polished. it got maybe a third of the likes my finished pieces get. but a woman in ohio bought the actual piece from it. wrote me a note about the torn corner on the photo, said she'd been thinking about it for a week. meanwhile the piece i spent a month on and staged nicely barely got a look. i don't know what the lesson is. maybe the mess is the product. or maybe it's just that one person finding the right thing is worth more than a hundred people double-tapping. i've been trying to figure out if i should post more of the ugly in-between stuff or if that was a fluke. leaning toward yes but i hate how much of this is guesswork.

Nine hours on a charcoal head, 300 euros. She sat down, saw the first version, and just started crying, and I sat there not knowing what to do with my hands and then said the price out loud and it came out as 300. I watched my mouth do it. Couldn't stop it. Here's the thing nobody warns you about: the discount doesn't stay with that one person. Word travels. Her sister messaged me last week, lovely message, "my sister says you're amazing, she says it was 300." Now I'm either the artist who charges 300 or the artist who has to explain why she was 300 and this one is 900. And I already know I'll do a bad job explaining it because I'll feel mean. The worst part is I don't even regret it. That painting is good. She cried. But I did the math after, 300 divided over nine hours plus the paper plus the fixative plus the two days I couldn't work because I'd used my whole arm doing it. And I'm 31 and I still live in a flat with a bathroom I won't describe. How do you actually say no to the second person without making the first person feel like a charity case.

Can't leave it alone. That is the problem. I did the whole pastel, it was fine, a bit too soft maybe, and then I decided to just fix the left eye. Fixing one thing in pastel means going over a dark area with more dark and then hating it. Two hours. Now one eye sits on the face like a sticker someone pressed on afterward and I can't scrape it back because I already set the whole thing with fixative like a genius. The worst part is I knew. I had the can in my hand and I thought, maybe wait. I did not wait. I have about four sheets of this toned grey Mi-Teintes left and I keep wasting them on faces I've already done. Tomorrow I start the same face again from scratch, same reference, and pretend the last one never happened. That's the plan. It's not a good plan. If you've ever wrecked something at the very last step please tell me about it, I need the company.

I put 900 zł on a 10x14 pastel portrait last month. First time I ever said a number out loud without adding "but we can work something out" after it. My hands were shaking a bit, which is embarrassing to type. For context, pastel is fast compared to oils but it is not fast. Toned paper, the layering, the fixing between passes, the part where I sit with it two days and decide the jaw is wrong and start the whole lower half again. Eleven, twelve hours if it goes well. Then I did the actual math and it came to about 75 zł an hour, before paper and the fixative that costs more than I want to admit because I buy the good one. And here is the thing I keep turning over. I did not raise it because I suddenly decided I am worth it. I raised it because I had four commissions stacked in one week and I was not sleeping, and I thought if I say the real number maybe two people go away and I can breathe. Nobody went away. All four said yes, quickly, no haggling. One asked if she could pay extra for a bigger size. So now I am sitting here slightly annoyed at myself, which is a strange feeling to have about your own pricing. All those months of undercharging and calling it being realistic. I have another one to quote tomorrow and I have already written 1,300 zł on the scrap paper, and I keep looking at it like it is a typo. If anyone has gone through the jump from "please like me" pricing to the other thing, I would genuinely like to hear how the first few went, because the number itself was the easy part. Saying it without flinching is the rest of it.

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?

Started the big charcoal at 8, meant to just tighten the shoulder line, and then I look up and it's 10:40 and I've drawn and redrawn the same left hand maybe eleven times. Erased it so hard there's a hole in the paper now. Real hole. You can see the wall through it. And here's the thing, the hand is the best it's been. Not because I got it right, because I finally stopped trying to get it right. Around the ninth pass I quit measuring and just put down what the arm was DOING, the weight of it, and it landed. Of course it did. Soon as I stopped auditioning it. But now the paper's torn and I have to decide if I lean into the hole or mount it and pretend it's not there. Part of me wants to leave it. The drawing survived something, you know? The hole is part of the sentence now. Anyway I've got charcoal under my fingernails and I smell like fixative and I've got to go buy more paper. What do you all do when the surface gets wrecked but the piece is finally alive. Fix it or let it show.

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. 😭

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.

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?