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Got the go-ahead on a commission for a large landscape piece. It's a local scene, a rolling hill farm at sunset. I'm so excited but also a little nervous, it's bigger than anything I've done before. I've stretched a 30x40 canvas and now just have to actually put brush to it. Wish me luck! I'll need all the focus I can get with the kids home for the summer too. Maybe I'll hide out in the garage studio after bedtime.

I've been selling small landscape pieces at the local fair circuit for about three years now at $80 a pop. People seem happy to pay it, I get regulars who come back every summer, and I told myself raising it would scare people off. This week I actually did the math for the first time. A 9x12 landscape uses maybe $6 of paint, but I burn through way more than I sell because I'm still learning and repaint constantly. Then the canvas, the frame, the booth fee split, gas to the fair. The last piece I sold, after everything, I made about $11 an hour. And that's the GOOD one, not the ones sitting in my studio because the sky came out wrong. Worst part is my friends think $80 is a splurge already. Going to $95 feels like a big ask in my head. I know it's not, but here we are. Anyone else frozen at a price you set years ago because raising it feels like you're being greedy?

I had a booth at a local craft fair Saturday and a woman picked up one of my acrylic landscapes, looked at it for a good minute, and said "oh this is nice, I could probably do this with my daughter's $5 watercolor set." And I just stood there like... okay. So do it then? I'd love to see you mix titanium white into a puddle of Crayola paint and get that kind of coverage on canvas. Please. Film it. I didn't say any of that of course. I smiled and said "you should give it a try, it's really relaxing!" and she moved on. My husband said I was too nice and I probably was but also what's the point. People who think art supplies are all the same are not people you're going to convince in one conversation at a folding table. Still felt like packing up my easel and going home though.

I still get a little annoyed thinking about this. Had a gallery interested in showing some of my landscapes a couple years back, which felt huge for me at the time. Then in the conversation they mentioned I'd be expected to cover the catering for the opening night. Not split, not share, me, fully. I was so flattered by the offer I almost said yes before common sense kicked in. What's the weirdest thing a gallery has asked you to pay for or provide? I want to know if the wine thing is actually normal somewhere or if I was right to walk.

Six months on one piece of granite. I don't usually work that slow. Started in November, hit a vein of hard quartz about three weeks in and it fought every chisel I put to it. Nearly scrapped it twice. Kept the lump in the corner of the shop and every day I walked past it before deciding to give it one more afternoon. Pulled the last tool off it this morning. No polish, left it the way it came off the stone. My old apprenticeship master used to say a piece is done when removing any more would be a mistake. This one is that. It's not going anywhere fancy. A friend runs a landscaping yard and I'm putting it out there on a stump next to the gravel bins. See if anyone touches it. That's the real test, who stops to run a hand over it. My daughter said I'm being stubborn about the gallery stuff again. Maybe. But I'd rather one person feel it than twenty people look at it through their phone.

I've never approached a gallery, honestly. I've only ever done local art fairs and a couple of small cafe shows. I keep telling myself I'll send some work out but I don't even know where to start, and part of me is scared of being laughed at with my little landscapes lol. I'd love to hear how your first one actually happened. Did you walk in cold? Send an email with photos? Get invited somehow? And how long had you been painting before you tried? I'll take all the stories as encouragement to finally do it. My plan was to email a small local gallery with three images and see what happens, but I've been sitting on that draft for two months 🙃

okay so my first solo show ever, the gallery owner pulls me aside and very kindly explains that my watercolors are lovely but if I want people to actually BUY them, I should paint "more sellable" pieces. landscapes with little cottages. like the ones you see in the waiting room at a dentist's office. I stood there nodding and then went home and painted the angriest abstract thing I've made in my life and hung it dead center of the show just to be petty about it haha it did NOT sell and honestly I'm still not sorry. what's the worst thing a gallery or dealer has ever pushed you to make? did you give in, push back, or quietly paint revenge art like me

I took a commission back in February for a 16x20 landscape, a friend of a friend wanted a specific view from their vacation photos. I quoted $200 which is usually fair for that size and my level. What I didn't account for was the two weeks I spent staring at those reference photos, trying to figure out how to handle the lighting, sketching thumbnails in my head while I was folding laundry, completely rethinking the composition twice before I even touched a brush. By the time I actually started painting I had probably put in 6-8 hours of just... mental labor. And I didn't charge for any of it. Finished it in about 10 hours of actual painting time so the math works out to like $12/hour before supplies. I know you can't really bill for "thinking about it" but also, that was work, you know? It was work. I'm trying to figure out how to price differently next time without feeling like I'm nickel-and-diming someone. Maybe just raise the flat rate enough to cover it and stop overthinking.

Listed a piece I nearly didn't photograph because I thought it was too raw. Charcoal smeared where I meant it to stay clean, torn photo edges showing, the whole thing kind of falling apart the way I usually try to hide. Put it up anyway last Tuesday with a caption that was basically "this one fought me." Sold in under 24 hours to someone who sent a message about their own mother's handwriting being the same as the one in the found photo. I didn't even notice the handwriting matched anything. I just pulled the photo because the dress in it looked like one my brother's first girlfriend wore. Every time I try to predict what lands, I'm wrong. The polished landscape pieces I actually thought would go sit there for months. This one, the one that felt like letting someone see the workbench mid-mess, gone like that. Makes me wonder how much of my process is just me tidying things that people would've liked fine as they were.

Okay so I took a commission to paint a memorial portrait and the whole week leading up to it I was like... this is a real person's actual loved one, what if I ruin the one thing they wanted to keep. I've done a million washes and landscapes and that same stupid window, but a face has to actually look like someone. That's a different kind of pressure. But I got the photos and it was this older man who apparently kept every bird feeder in his neighborhood full, and his daughter wrote me the sweetest email about him and I just... cried in my studio for a minute and then got to work. I did the underdrawing three times before the proportions felt right. Started the wash at like 10pm on a Tuesday and didn't look up until 3am. His eyes took me four attempts. The daughter wanted him mid-laugh and I must have painted and scraped that mouth area so many times the paper started to complain. It dried last night and I stood there just staring at it for a really long time. It's him. It's actually him, I got the laugh right. I sent her the photo and she said her mom cried, and then I cried again, and honestly I think this is the most scared I've ever been while working and also the most right it's ever felt. I've been so worried that going full-time meant I'd end up just grinding out work I don't care about. But this one mattered. That's the whole point right??

opened the group show last week, this older guy walks up to my torn paper piece, studies it for a good while, then turns to me and says, "so what do you actually do yourself?" like it's a trick question. i said I tear the paper, he said no, I mean the assembly. I said I assemble it. he nodded and walked off. I still don't know what he thought I was outsourcing. the tearing? the thinking? it's been sitting in me all week. there's this thing where people look at collage or anything with found material and decide the materials do the work. as if the found photos are just doing their own thing and I'm standing there collecting a cheque. nobody says that to someone who paints a landscape. they don't ask which bits the brush did. I know I shouldn't let one guy get under my skin but I keep hearing it. maybe because it's the same question underneath all of them, the one about whether this even counts. tired of defending it to strangers who've already decided.

Picked up a landscape at an estate sale last weekend for $12. Frame was ugly, paint was muddy, but something about the sky felt off, like it was doing more work than it should. Took a scraper to a corner tonight just to see and there's a whole family portrait under it. Three people, dog, someone's hands folded in their lap. I don't know why I'm so moved by it. Somebody painted over their own family. Or somebody else's. Either way they wanted it gone and it wouldn't stay gone. Gonna try to lift the top layer carefully. If I ruin both paintings so be it, but I want to see the faces.

I had a student today, nice woman, retired, picking up mosaic as a hobby. She's doing a landscape with those big square precut tiles from the craft store and she's setting them all in neat rows like bricks. Andamento, the flow of the lines, the direction the tesserae move, it's the whole conversation, right? It's what makes mosaic breathe instead of looking like a tile floor. I tried to explain why the river in her piece should follow the curve of the water, not the grid. She looked at me like I was speaking Ancient Greek. Which, fair. But here's the thing, I've been doing this long enough that I genuinely can't tell anymore if andamento matters to the average person looking at a mosaic, or if it's just us, the people who sit on floors cutting things, who care. Maybe everyone else just sees a pretty picture made of little squares. I still teach it of course. I'm stubborn. But sometimes I wonder if I'm passing on a religion instead of a technique. 😅

there's this one awful landscape at the goodwill near my studio. a lake, some pine trees, the kind of sky that looks like the painter gave up halfway through. it's been there for months and i keep buying it, working over it, and then i guess i donate it back? because last week i walked in and there it was again. third time now. i've painted over it twice, once with a figure standing in the lake, once just blacking out the sky entirely, and both times i got it to a place i liked and then just... brought it back. i'm not even sure why. maybe i like that it keeps coming around. like it's not done with me either. anyway it was back on the shelf today with a new price tag. i didn't buy it this time. felt like i should at least pretend i've moved on.

found this landscape at goodwill for $4. someone painted it carefully, every tree has individual leaves, the sky is blended smooth. i bought it because i wanted to collage over it, use the sky as a ground for something else. but now i can't bring myself to touch it. it's not good, technically, but you can feel the time in it. someone sat with this for hours. maybe it was a gift. maybe it hung in someone's kitchen for thirty years. i keep pulling it out of the stack and putting it back. i've had it for three months. i know the rational thing is to just work on something else. but this is the one i keep circling. anyone else get stuck on a piece of source material like it's a person you owe something to?

two years it's been leaning against the wall in my studio, face turned away like I couldn't stand to look at it. this landscape I started right after my brother died, trying to paint the place we scattered his ashes, and it was just... bad. muddy. overworked. I couldn't touch it. today I finally pulled the staples out. ripped the canvas off the frame. just let it crumple on the floor. and then I cut out the only part of it that worked, maybe six square inches of sky, and glued it into my sketchbook. like a little window. the rest went in the trash. felt like I could breathe again.

Signed up for a "Sunday afternoon landscape workshop" at the local community center. $65, reasonable. Show up and it's 1pm to 6pm. That's not an afternoon, that's a full work shift. I've got to pick up my 8 year old at 4:30. So I got to do the underpainting and then pack up while everyone else was adding their second layer. I asked if they ever do shorter versions and the instructor said "well, you really need the full time to develop the piece" like I hadn't just paid to develop about 40% of a piece. I get that you can't rush painting but also I have a life??? I'd pay the same $65 for a tight 2.5 hour session that actually fits into a Saturday.

I've been looking at my palette knife scrapings lately. You know, the thick little piles of paint I scrape off when cleaning my knife. They dry into these surprisingly complex little landscapes. I'm fascinated by the way the oil dries, the subtle variations in color and texture depending on the pigment. Some are almost like tiny, cracked desert surfaces, others have a waxy sheen. It's a reminder of the physical life of the paint itself, beyond the image I'm trying to create. Perhaps I should start collecting these little beauties.

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?

So I had this conversation with a gallery owner last week. Small place, mostly sells to people who want "art that goes with the sofa" kind of thing. She was genuinely interested in my work, wanted to take a few pieces on consignment. But she kept pushing me to price them higher than I wanted, not in a greedy way, more like she thought I was undervaluing myself. And I couldn't explain it properly to her. It's not that I think my work is worthless. It's that I paint these old Bangalore houses that are being torn down, and I know the people who used to live in them. Some of them still come and watch me draw. So when I put a price on it, it feels like I'm putting a price on someone's childhood, you know? She said "then don't sell them, just show them." But I do need to sell. I just don't want to pretend it's the same as selling a print of a nice landscape. Anyway, I priced them lower than she wanted and she took three. Two sold in a week. Which I don't know if that proves anything or nothing.