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So I quoted a piece last week, 16x20, four figures, real time on it, and the person goes "that feels steep for watercolor, no?" and I just sat there typing and deleting for like ten minutes. Because here's the thing, that's the exact sentence watercolor gets. Gouache never gets it. Oil never gets it. But watercolor is "just" the medium that comes in a little pan for kids. Which is insane because watercolor is the least forgiving thing I do. There is no covering up. No scraping back to a happy accident. You make one wrong wash at hour nine and you're starting the whole sheet over. I have a stack of failures in my closet that would make you cry. I didn't say any of that, obviously. I wrote something very polite about materials and process and how many hours it takes and how the paper alone is like $40 a sheet before I even touch it. And you know what, they said yes?? They just wanted to understand it. Which I guess is the actual lesson and I hate that the lesson is "explain yourself more." But also I'm kind of tired of explaining myself more. Does anyone else get the "feels steep" thing and how do you answer it without turning into a lecture. Because I keep doing the lecture and then apologizing for the lecture and then giving a discount, haha. The discount is the real problem. I know the discount is the real problem. 🙃

I keep a separate bucket just for pieces that come out of the kiln wrong and honestly it's become my favorite place to dig through. Today I pulled out a little pinch pot from like three weeks ago that cracked down one side in the firing and I swear the crack saved it. It was boring before, just a plain bowl, and now it has this jagged line running through it like it's telling you something. I glazed over the edge of the break and it looks intentional. It might have been the best piece I made all month and it was a failure. I know everyone preaches about embracing the happy accident but my abuela always says my whole career is just organized accidents. She's not wrong. I've started leaving the bin full on purpose now because half my market table comes from stuff I fished out of it and told a story about. The kiln does what it wants. You just have to be paying attention when it happens.

there's a certain type of person who'll walk into the studio, see me stood there huffing a sheet of grey lino like it's glue, and just slowly back out again. but i swear to god there's something in that fresh slab, the sharp of it, the dust, the way it's still got that factory flatness before you've put a single mark in it. it's the same feeling as the first cut into a new block of cheese. potential. pure potential. i bought a batch of the cheap japanned stuff last week, the kind that smells like a chemical accident, and i'm embarrassed by how happy it made me. the dog came in, sniffed it, and walked straight back out again. fair play to her. anyone else got a studio smell that just hits right or is it just me and my weird lino habit