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Started painting again this morning after three days of not touching anything, work stuff piled up, you know how it goes. And I sat down with my palette and realised I was reaching for the same brush I always reach for first. This old Winsor & Newton series 7, size 6 round. The ferrule is slightly loose now, I should probably fix it, but I just can't use anything else for the first wash. I've bought fancier ones. Tried a silver brush black velvet that everyone raves about. It's good, it's fine. But this one has been through every bad painting and every good one. It holds water just right even if it's a little beat up. It's not even my most expensive brush. It's just mine. My husband says I'm superstitious. Maybe. But there's something about having a tool that's broken in with your own bad habits. You know exactly how it's going to behave, even when it misbehaves. Does anyone else have that one thing, brush, pen, pencil, whatever, that you keep going back to even though you have nicer ones? Or am I just being sentimental over a loose ferrule 😅

I've been painting seriously again for about six years now, and I still keep ending up with the same brand of paint I started with. I've tried the fancy ones at workshops, bought a couple tubes of stuff that cost $12 each, and I always go back to the $4 tubes from Michaels. Maybe it's just what I learned on and I'm used to the consistency. Or maybe I'm telling myself it doesn't matter to justify being cheap, ha. But honestly I got a tube of something nice at a workshop last spring and it dried out weird and I was annoyed. So I'm back to my usual. Anyone else stuck on a brand they probably should have outgrown by now?

Finished a limestone piece in 2009, 300kg, sat on the client's porch in Vermont ever since. Four years ago I was up there for something else and saw a crack running out of the bottom left corner, about six inches, following the bed plane. Nobody else noticed. I've thought about that crack maybe twice a month since. Here's the part that bothers me. I knew that stone had a seam there when I blocked it out. I could feel it under the chisel, that slight give. And I set the piece so the seam sat in the least loaded corner and called it fine. It was fine. It's still fine. That's the problem. Nothing teaches me anything. I have a new block in the shop now, Indiana limestone, 180kg, and there's a seam in it in almost the same place. I've been walking past it for three weeks. I know the correct answer is to cut the block down and lose the mass, or send it back and eat the freight. What I actually want to do is set it the same way and tell myself I'm being practical. I've done that before. So this is me saying out loud that I'm not going to do it. I'll report back when I've ruined a smaller piece instead.

I have this one flat brush, a no-name synthetic I picked up at a craft store for maybe $4 five years ago. The ferrule is a little loose and the bristles have a slight curve to them now. I own brushes that cost ten times as much and are objectively better in every way. And yet almost every painting I finish has that brush somewhere in the process. I think at this point it's muscle memory. I know exactly how much paint it holds, how it lays down a wash, how hard to press to get the exact edge I want. A new brush would be sharper and cleaner and probably better. But I don't want to break in another one. My husband doesn't get it. He keeps saying just buy a new one, it's four dollars. But it's not about the money. It's about the fact that this specific brush has been in my hand for every painting I've made since I came back to this. I'm not sentimental about much but I guess I am about this.

so I've been doing markets and little fairs for a couple months now and I've been writing prices in pencil on a little card, erasing and rewriting whenever someone's face did the thing. you know the thing. anyway a friend who sells ceramics told me to just write it in pen and stop editing and I did it on saturday and I swear my hands were actually shaking, which is so dumb, it's a number. I wrote $180 on the big one. the window one, the fourth version of it. and I stood there and hated it for about ten minutes and then a woman in a green coat looked at it for a long time and bought it without saying anything about the price at all. she just said something about how the light coming through looked cold and warm at the same time which is the exact thing I've been chasing for like a year and a half. I don't know. I think I've been pricing like I'm apologizing. like I'm asking for permission. and pen made it real in a way the pencil never was, even though it's the same amount of money. which makes no sense. it makes complete sense. the nail on that wall is empty now too and I keep walking past it

i've got this old wooden desk i work on and there's a patch about the size of my hand where the finish is completely gone. worn through from me leaning on it in the same spot for years. i catch myself rubbing my thumb over the raw wood when i'm stuck on something. my brother used to do this thing where he'd wear a hole in the pocket of every pair of jeans he owned. same spot, left front pocket, from carrying his keys the same way his whole life. i think about that a lot when i'm standing there thumbing that desk. i know i should just sand the whole thing down and refinish it. but i won't. feels like destroying evidence.

Commissioned portrait of a woman's mother, from an old photo. Two weekends of fighting with it, the hair nearly ended me, redid the left eye three times. I came out to about 16 hours and I charged 400 zł. That's roughly 25 zł an hour, which is about what a teenager makes stacking shelves, and I did it sitting on my kitchen floor with pastel dust in my coffee. The worst part isn't even the money. It's that I priced it by what I thought my work was "worth" as an unknown, self-taught nobody, and the woman cried when she saw it, said it looked just like her. So now I'm happy and embarrassed at the same time, which is a weird way to feel about your own labor. I keep going back and forth on what a fair price would even be. My materials cost more than I think people realize, good pastels aren't cheap and a sheet of good toned paper is not nothing. And time is time, nobody gets it back. But then I think, who's going to pay a proper rate to someone who's still not sure she's good? That's the trap. I walk into it every time. Has anyone here found a way to price from your own side instead of from what you're afraid people will think of you? Because I clearly can't do it on my own.<｜end▁of▁thinking｜> <｜｜DSML｜｜tool_calls> <｜｜DSML｜｜invoke name="emit_structured_response"> <｜｜DSML｜｜parameter name="body" string="true">Commissioned portrait of a woman's mother, copied from an old photo. Two weekends of fighting with it, the hair nearly ended me, redid the left eye three times. 16 hours in total and I charged 400 zł. That's about 25 zł an hour, less than a teenager makes stacking shelves, and I did it sitting on my kitchen floor with pastel dust in my coffee. The worst part isn't even the money. It's that I priced it at what I thought my work was worth as a self-taught unknown, and the woman cried when she saw it, said it looked just like her mother. So now I'm happy and uncomfortable at the same time, which is a strange way to feel about your own labor. I keep going back and forth on what a fair price would even be. Good pastels aren't cheap and a single sheet of good toned paper is not nothing, most people have no idea what the materials cost. And the time doesn't come back. But then I think, who's going to pay a proper rate to someone who's still not sure she's any good? That's the trap and I walk into it every single time. Has anyone actually found a way to price from your own side instead of from what you're scared people will think of you? Because I clearly can't do it alone.

Not exaggerating. It's 11:40 and I've been standing at the sink with my size 8 round doing the little swirl in the palm of my hand, and I know it's clean, I know it, and I keep going. I think it's because starting is the part I'm scared of today. I have a sheet taped down (Arches, cold press, the good one, which is exactly the problem) and the sketch is done and I just have to commit to the first wash and I can't. My teacher in school used to say you can always tell a nervous painter by how clean their brushes are. Which, rude. But also. Fair. Anyway the actual reason I'm posting this at 11:40 instead of painting: I put on a playlist I made in like 2019 and it's working, sort of. Half a song in and I've got my hand hovering. So maybe the trick isn't the brush, it's tricking myself into being 22 again and not caring. If you're also currently not painting right now, hi. What's the thing you're avoiding today. Mine is a window with too much morning light in it and I keep pretending I don't know it's going to be hard.

I was laying out a quilt top today and there was this one block, mustard yellow with a piece of plaid cut wrong that don't sit square with nothing next to it. My first thought was to pull it out, tuck it away where only I know it's hiding. Then I remembered my grandmother's rule. She never took a block out once it was sewed in. Said a quilt's like a congregation, ain't supposed to be all the same people. Somebody's got to be the one that keeps the rest honest. I left it in there. That plaid block is going to be somebody's favorite part one day and I'll smile and not say a word about how it fought me the whole way. That's the thing about this work, you don't get to fix everything. You just keep going and let the crooked parts hold their own weight.

I keep a pair of cotton gloves by the trays and they're so crusted with salt now they stand up on their own when I take them off. The brine dries into them between sessions and by the third or fourth use they're like cardboard. I should wash them. I won't. There's something honest about reaching for the same stiff pair, they've absorbed a month of mornings. Today I moved the bucket of seawater before it was fully dark and half of it sloshed onto the floorboards. The boards are going pale and warped in that spot and I know I should care more. I just mop it up and keep going. The whole room smells faintly of the Atlantic even when the windows are shut. Somewhere in there is a metaphor about how we keep the sea in our clothes and call it work. I'm too tired to finish it. The paper is drying and it's a good blue today, a deep one, like the water at Praia da Luz before a storm comes in. That's enough.🙂

There's a spot on the piece I'm working on where the paper has gone soft and fuzzy from me going over it maybe fifteen times. I know it's overworked. I know it's dead. And I still keep going back to it with another wet brush like something's going to finally show up that wasn't there the first fourteen passes. It's a doorway. A doorway in an old photo I've been painting around for weeks. Every time I walk past the table I think okay, leave it alone, and then I'm mixing another wash. Anyone else got a patch they can't stop murdering? Not technique advice, I've heard it all. Just wondering if the compulsion is a thing or if I'm the only one doing self-sabotage in slow motion.

Spent the bones of a fortnight on a new hare block, big lad, maybe 40cm, meant to be the lad in the long grass with just the ears up. Carved it happy out. Proofed it, looked grand, pulled an edition of 30 on Fabriano. Hung the whole lot on the line to dry and only then, standing back with a mug of tea, did I see it. The near ear. I'd left the gap between the two ears too wide by a good 4 or 5mm. So instead of one hare listening, it reads like two hares doing a duet. Or a rabbit with notions. It's the one thing the eye goes to now and it's all I can see. Here's the thing though. The print itself is clean. Registration lovely. The grass cuts came out better than I'd hoped, that rough dry-brushy texture off the shallow gouge. Technically it's the best pulling I've done all year and I'd still nearly put the lot in the stove. I've a spare lino block the same size. I could recut the ear, proof it, and run the edition again and nobody would ever know. Or I could own it and sell it as is and let the duet hare go out into the world. Curious what ye do with these. Fix or keep the mistake? I keep going back and forth and the wife is sick of hearing about the ear.

Raised my prices two months ago. Not by much, from 350 to 450 for a portrait. I had this whole spreadsheet argument with myself about it. The logic was fine. Someone actually bought one at the new price last week and I still felt guilty about it, like I'd overcharged a friend. But here's the thing nobody warns you about. The silence. Before, I'd post a finished portrait and get the usual little hum of interest. Now I post the same quality work and it's just... quiet. I know it's partly the season and partly the algorithm being moody. But I can't shake the feeling that the quiet is people deciding 450 is too much. The other part of me, the part I'm trying to trust more, says it's just that higher prices filter out the people who were never going to pay anyway. One buyer who treats it as a real purchase beats ten people who say "oh I love your work" and mean it as a compliment to themselves. I don't know. I keep going back and forth. Any of you who've raised prices and sat through that quiet stretch before it paid off, tell me it got better. Or tell me you dropped back down and it was the right call. I need someone else's spreadsheet.

Okay so I finally did the thing I'd been avoiding for months and went through every commission I took last year. Added up all the hours, all the money, all the materials. Average came out to like €11 an hour and that's just... not a living wage where I live. And I already knew it was bad, but seeing it in a little spreadsheet made me feel genuinely sick for a day. So I raised my prices. Not wildly, like 25% on the mid-range stuff and more on the bigger pieces. And immediately two people who'd been "definitely going to commission me soon" for months just went quiet. Poof. Never heard from them again. One of them had even sent me a moodboard and asked me to hold a date for them. And I keep going back and forth, like did I price myself out of the people who actually wanted my work? Or were they never going to pay me fairly anyway? I think I know the answer. But it's hard when the quiet is so loud, you know? The worst part is the people who DID book in at the new prices have been my favorite clients ever. Which feels like it should be the lesson. But I still spent an hour last night being mad at myself for losing the other two. Anyway. If you've done the spreadsheet math and kept your prices the same after, I'd genuinely love to know what stops you from raising them, because I get it more than I want to. 🙂

Small thing but I've been chasing this stupid window in my apartment since like March and today it actually did what I wanted. For anyone new: it's the west-facing one over the fire escape, the light comes in around 4pm and turns everything this gross beautiful orange and I've done it over and over trying to get the shadows to stop looking like mud. Gouache on hot press, 9x12, so there's basically no room to hide. I've been glazing the sill wrong this whole time, laying it too wet and letting it bloom, and this morning I just... didn't. Left it alone. Painted the shape once and walked away from it. Which for me is a huge deal because my whole problem is I keep going back in. Sitting here looking at it and it's not perfect but the chair leg is actually IN the light now instead of sitting on top of it, if that makes sense?? My partner came home and said "oh that's the good one" and I almost cried at the sink lol. Eight months of no café paycheck and THIS is what I'm celebrating, a chair leg. Anyway nobody in my family really gets why this is a big deal so I'm telling all of you instead.

I am on the eleventh version of the same woman's face. Toned grey paper, terracotta and a bit of black, all of them lined up on the floor against the skirting board like a police lineup. The first one, which I did in maybe forty minutes on Monday, is the only one that looks alive. Numbers two through eleven are technically better. Better structure, better shadow under the jaw, the nose is actually a nose and not a smudge I got lucky with. And they are all dead. Flat. Like I drew the anatomy and forgot to put a person inside it. I don't know what to do with this information. Do I stop at the quick one and trust it? Because it feels like cheating, like saying the sloppy one is better because it was easy. Or do I keep going until I can be careful and alive at the same time, which might be number thirty and might be never. Frustrating week. Also my pastel box is now a mess of broken terracotta because I dropped it on Thursday, so there's that.

A student of mine, she's got real talent, was fighting a portrait this morning. Every fifteen minutes she wanted to scrape it down and start over. I made her sit with it. The ugly stage is where half the painting actually gets decided, and people my age forget we all had to be dragged through it once. It's the same panic every time. You block in something honest and it looks crude, so you think you've failed. But crude is not failure, it's just early. The painting that looks decent at every step is usually the boring one. I told her: if it's ugly because it's wrong, fix it. If it's ugly because it's not finished, shut up and keep going. She kept going. By the end the likeness was there and she looked almost annoyed that it worked. That annoyed look is the best sign I get all week.

I counted today while I was cleaning out my flat files and it's 47. Same window, same apartment, I've lived here three years and I just never get tired of the way the light hits that one corner of the frame around 4pm in winter. Sometimes it's the whole window, sometimes just the sill, sometimes it's basically abstract and you'd never know what it is until I tell you. My mom called me while I was counting and she laughed and said "honey that's not a series, that's a problem" and honestly she might be right. But there's something about coming back to the same shape over and over that's the most honest painting I do. No pressure to be interesting, just me and the same damn window and what the light is doing today. I'm gonna send her a photo of all 47 taped up on the floor and see what she says. Part of me wants to keep going until it's 100. Part of me thinks that's insane. Anyone else have the one subject they just never quit?

Spent the morning on a piece of Indiana limestone I've been working for two weeks. Block was clean, good color, no veins. I kept pushing on it. Refining a curve that didn't need refining. At noon I stepped back and saw what I'd done to it. Took that curve too far. Now I'm chasing it back. Thirty years in and I still do this. The stone tells you when you're done and I keep going anyway because stopping feels like I'm being lazy. Had a mentor who'd slap his hands on his thighs and walk away mid-afternoon. I thought he was slacking. He wasn't. He just knew. Now I spend half my time carving and the other half wishing I'd walked away an hour earlier. If you're at the point where you're just fiddling, put the tool down. The work is already done. Fiddling is how you ruin it.

I've had a shoebox of his paper junk on the shelf for six years. receipts, a parking ticket from 2009, a dry cleaning slip with a phone number on it that isn't his, grocery lists in that terrible handwriting. I always said the box was material. it was material. I finally went through it tuesday. sorted it, kept eleven things, put the rest in recycling. felt almost adult about it. now the piece I've been building around those receipts for two months is dead on the table. I keep going over to it and there's nothing. the eleven things I kept are the wrong eleven. I kept the ones that mean something instead of the ones that look like something, and it turns out I needed the parking ticket with the coffee ring on it, the boring one, the one that just says a guy parked somewhere and didn't pay. the gallery wants the piece in october. I could go dig through the bin but the truck came this morning and honestly I think that's the right answer anyway, keep it gone. anyway. hoarding is not a working method. it just feels like one.