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I keep a small notebook where I log every pigment I've ever bought: the manufacturer, the series number, the lightfastness rating, the date I first mixed it, and a brush swipe of the color once it's dried. Forty-seven pages now, and this afternoon I counted. I have eleven different blues. That's not a confession of extravagance. Eleven blues each do a genuinely different thing, and I can defend every single one of them. But then I flipped to the greens and realized I own six viridian-adjacent tubes that are, if I'm being honest with myself, within a hair of each other on the page. One of them I bought because the shop had it in a display tray and the label was printed in a serif typeface I liked. I teach a class every spring, and I tell my students the first week that you need exactly three yellows, two reds, and two blues, and everything else is laziness or vanity. I believe that, too. It's just that I am apparently a very good student and a very poor practitioner of my own advice. The serif typeface got me.

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.

Not deep, barely a scratch. But it's on the pad of my left thumb, exactly where I press to feel the cut edge when I'm checking a tessera. So two days now I'm sitting here doing nothing, or worse, sorting by colour like an intern. The infuriating part is I did it being lazy. I have a small wooden jig for holding the small stuff when I score it. It was right there. I turned my head to answer the phone and pushed the wheel through with my thumb in the wrong place, like I've never held a hammer before. So now I have one panel that's 80 percent done and a thumb wrapped in tape like a cartoon character, and my neighbour Katerina keeps asking if I went to the doctor. For a cut. In Greece. My grandmother would laugh at me. Does anyone else have a body part that decides when they can work? Because mine is the thumb and I am not going to win this argument.

Sold a little vase at the market on Saturday that I thought was one of my worst pieces. The glaze came out cloudy and the lip slumped to one side when I was being lazy with the wire. I almost didn't even put it out. Some woman picked it up, turned it around for like five minutes, and said it was her favorite thing on the table. Paid full price without asking for a discount, which never happens here. And look. I took the money. I smiled and wrapped it up. But I've been thinking about it all week. Either my taste is completely broken or people genuinely see something in the wonk that I write off as failure. Maybe both. Because the pieces I actually love, the ones I photograph and post and get excited about, those sit. It's the accidents that sell. My grandma always said the kiln knows better than the maker. Maybe she's right and I'm just too close to see it. Anyway, tonight I pulled the one I was convince was ruined and I'm leaving it out on the shelf. Not hiding it in the back. We'll see who's wrong.

I realised something yesterday while I was pulling proofs that I already knew but hadn't admitted: the part I love most is the preparation. The drawing on the plate, the aquatint, the biting, the masking. The thinking part. Then I get to the printing and something in me checks out. I rush it. I'm already onto the next idea. I used to think this meant I was lazy or not a "real" printmaker but maybe it's just that my brain likes potential more than completion. The proof is where everything is still possible. Once it's an edition it's just... fixed. Decided. I have about 40 copper plates sitting in a drawer that are etched and ready and I haven't printed. Some from two years ago. I tell myself I'm saving them for the right paper or the right mood but honestly I think I just don't want them to be finished. Anyone else work this way or am I just avoiding the hard part?

Ok so the thing nobody warns you about with big figure work: you get ONE part right and it turns on you. I was doing the lower half of this standing figure all afternoon, mostly fighting the knee because knees are evil and nobody talks about it enough. Got it. Finally got the shape and the weight and the little dent of shadow under it and I was actually pleased, which is rare and dangerous. Now the thigh above it reads like a balloon full of pudding. The kneecap is so good it's making the rest of the leg look lazy. I've been standing in front of it for twenty minutes doing that thing where you tilt your head like the angle is the problem and not the leg. Past me would have wiped the whole thing. I'm not doing that tonight. I'm going to eat something and go to bed and tomorrow I'll fix the thigh. Probably. Unless I decide the knee is the problem after all. This is genuinely the dumbest job in the world sometimes.

I spent about six hours on a pastel portrait last week, a face I've redone maybe five times now, and posted it. Got a polite handful of likes and one comment from a friend. Then on Thursday I was cleaning up and took a lazy phone snap of the box itself. Stubs down to the wrappers, the dust all over the lid, my thumbprints on everything. Didn't even wipe the table. That photo has four times the reach of the finished piece. I'm not going to pretend I understand it, exactly. I think people liked seeing the mess more than the result? Or maybe the finished thing is just harder to say something about. Anyway I'm not going to start posting only pastel dust. But it's stuck with me, and it made me a little sad about the portrait, honestly. Has this happened to anyone else, the working photo outperforming the work?

ok so I have this porcelain palette, the big rectangle one, and I got it when I went full time in March as a "you're a real artist now" gift to myself. told myself I'd clean it every single session. it is now December-ish and there is a layer of dried paint in there that has its own topography. like I can see the ghost of every painting I've made this year in the mixing wells. there's a specific grey-brown in the corner from that commission that went badly, I know exactly which one. and here's the thing, I KNOW you're supposed to work clean, my old professor would have a stroke, but I've started dipping into the old dried stuff with a wet brush and getting these colors I could never mix on purpose. like accidental neutrals. this dusty mauve that only exists because I was lazy in October. I've used it in three paintings since. my partner keeps offering to scrub it for me as a nice gesture and I keep saying no and I can't fully explain why without sounding insane. anyway I just spent 40 minutes mixing a green for a leaf and got it in two tries off the mud so. posting this instead of admitting anything to my professor. does anyone else hoard their palette like this or am I the only gremlin here

There is a bucket by the door that I use for the final rinse, and I stopped emptying it at some point in June. Maybe July. The water has gone a strange pale blue, almost grey, and there is a smell now, salt and something older underneath. It started because I was lazy. Then I noticed the prints that came out of it were softer at the edges, the blue less hard, and I told myself that was a reason to keep it. I'm not sure that's true. I think I just like that it is there, holding all the hours I spent over it, and pouring it away feels like throwing out a day. My partner asked this morning if it was going to live there forever. I said probably not. We both knew I was lying. Does anyone else keep something in the studio that has stopped being useful and you keep it anyway? Or is it only me who hoards the water.

the palette is one of those cheap grey plastic ones from the art store, the big rectangle with the thumb hole. i've been using it so long that the actual mixing surface is a mound now, old ultramarine and burnt sienna and this orange i've been chasing for two years sitting under everything like sediment. i know a clean palette is "correct." i know the colors get muddy. i've been told. but every time i go to soak it or scrape it down i just... don't. part of it is laziness, obviously. part of it is that the dried layer is basically a color swatch of every decision i've made in that studio, and scraping it off feels like throwing out notes. anyway it's 11pm and i'm sitting here telling myself i'll clean it sunday. i won't.

Every week a gallery or a fellow painter tells me I have to show more of the work in motion. The brush going down, the glazing, the palette. And I get it, people watch that stuff. But there is a reason I stopped filming my hand a few years ago and it's not laziness. When I film myself painting, I paint for the camera. Not consciously. But the hand becomes a performer. The strokes get more theatrical, the pauses disappear, the whole thing becomes a demonstration of painting instead of painting. That's not the same activity. I spent my thirties unlearning performing, I'm not going to spend my fifties picking it back up for a views count. The strange part is the numbers agree with me. My studio shots, the finished work, even the messy shelf where I keep my mediums, those posts do fine. Steady. Modest. The kind of engagement that actually brought me two commissions this year. And when I did post a reel a few months ago, close on the palette, the reach was higher and the inquiries were zero. People want to watch the paint move, they don't want to buy the painting. That tells me something. I'm not saying nobody should show process. Go ahead, it works for plenty of people. I just think some of us are better served by being a bit less available. The mystery of how it gets made used to be part of the value.

My abuela came over yesterday and was looking at the pieces drying on the shelf. She said, "Mateo, why do they all look so sad?" and pointed at this little vessel I made that has a face melted into the side of it, half-tilted, like it's thinking about a nap. And I said "they're not sad, they're... contemplative." She just laughed at me. "Contemplative. My foot." She's not wrong though. Everything I make leans. Nothing sits straight. Is that melancholy or is it just what clay does when you don't fight it? Kind of a lazy question but I've been turning it over since. I don't think they're sad. I think they're tired. There's a difference. Maybe I'm the one who's tired. Anyway she left with one of them. The saddest one. Said it reminded her of my uncle. Abuelas always keep things weird.

The algorithm pushed my old Mysore palace sketch from 2019 to 40k people this week. Four hundred likes on a painting I did sitting on a park bench with wobbly perspective because I was too lazy to walk around to the other side. Meanwhile the piece I spent six weeks on, the one where I measured everything twice and worked the light properly, is sitting at 31 likes. Three. One. I know the answer is supposed to be "just post more, the algorithm is random, consistency consistency." But I've been doing this long enough to notice a pattern now. The stuff that lands is never the stuff I sweated over. It's the throwaway morning sketch, the wobbly bench one, the half-finished thing I almost didn't scan. I don't know what to do with that honestly. Do I keep painting for the craft and accept the algorithm doesn't care? Or do I get smart and start churning out the loose quick ones that perform, and keep the serious work for prints and shows where it actually gets seen properly? Right now I'm doing neither and it's making me a bit cranky. Anyone else found a way to hold both, the work you care about and the work that works?

For years I had to have something on, podcasts, playlists, the radio, whatever. Fill the silence. I thought it helped me concentrate. Then about three months ago my headphones broke and I was too lazy to replace them, so I just worked without. First week felt naked, like something was missing. Second week I started noticing the sound of the brush. That little wet drag across the panel, the tick of the ferrule against the easel, the way linseed oil makes a certain quiet suction sound when you wipe a brush on a rag. Now I can't go back. The silence isn't empty, it's full of information about what I'm doing. I hear when I'm forcing the paint versus letting it glide. I hear hesitation in the pause before a stroke. My husband thinks I've become a monk. Maybe. But I've been painting better these three months than I have in years, and I think part of it is just finally listening.

I ran out of my usual Mi-Teintes mid-week and didn't feel like going into town, so I grabbed the cheapest pastel paper the shop had, the generic school kind, the one I used to look down on a little. Some hard gritty thing that grabs every layer and won't let go. And you know what, it's kind of wonderful. The tooth is so aggressive you can't over-blend, it stops me from smearing everything into that same soft mush I always fall into when I'm nervous. It forces me to commit to each mark because you can't really fix it once it's down. Ten euros for a whole ream instead of the price of one decent pad. I did a small portrait of my partner on it last night and the roughness actually suits him, his face is all angles and stubble, and I keep staring at it wondering why I never tried this before. Might be a phase, might be that I finally learned that the expensive stuff was just making me lazy. Anyway, I think I'll keep the ugly paper around. Does anyone else keep a cheap paper they reach for when the good stuff makes you feel too precious to touch? Or am I alone in this weirdness. 🙂

I was so sure this little vessel with the face emerging on the side was gone. There was a line I thought was a crack after the bisque firing, I almost threw it in the recycling bucket. Decided to fire it anyway out of stubbornness, or laziness, honestly, I was tired. Opened the kiln at 8am and it's not a crack. It's a thin dark line in the glaze that follows the curve of the piece and it looks like the figure is smiling through a scar. I sat on the floor with it for five minutes just turning it in my hands. These moments where the kiln decides something for you. I swear half the time I'm just the assistant and the fire is the real artist.

I have this old porcelain palette I've been using for maybe twelve years. It's cracked, the well in the corner has a chip that I keep meaning to sand smooth, and the patina of dried paint around the edges is so thick now it's changed the shape. My students look at it like it's a biohazard. But the thing is, I know exactly where every colour lives on it. My hand goes there without my eyes. I could mix a flesh tone in the dark on that palette. And when I try a clean one, a nice new piece of glass, even, I'm suddenly a stranger to myself. The mixes come out wrong. I'm hesitating. There's something about the accumulated stain of years that becomes part of the process. The ghost of a terre verte I mixed three weeks ago still faintly in the white. The smear of lead white that's been there so long it's practically fired on. It's not laziness. It's memory.

The flat file has a drawer I don't open when people visit. Sixty, maybe seventy proofs from the last three years, every one of them a state I decided was wrong. Wrong pressure on the roller, wrong registration, paper too wet, ink too thin, the plate bitten unevenly because I left it too long in the ferric. In Berlin I had a studio mate who binned everything immediately. Said it was hygiene. I understand the logic and I can't do it. A bad proof is still a document of a decision. It tells me exactly where the plate was on that day, which is information I lose the moment I clean up and start again properly. Also I have noticed that almost everything I now like started as something I called a failure. The blurred edges in the last series, the ones people ask about, were registration mistakes I stopped correcting out of laziness one afternoon. Then they became the whole point of the work. Which is a slightly embarrassing way to arrive at a method. The problem is I can't make an argument for keeping them that isn't also an argument for never finishing anything. At some point the drawer is just a place where I avoid the decision. Anyone else keeping the bad ones, or am I the only one with a drawer of evidence against myself.

So I finally bought one of those daylight desk lamps everybody in the group swears by, $60 on marketplace, barely used. Set it up Sunday to photograph two small landscapes I want to list before the fall fair. Photos came out flat and slightly blue and honestly the ones I took by the window with my phone propped on a cereal box looked better. I think the problem is I've got it straight on and it's killing all the texture. Everything I read said side lighting and I did not do that. Also my camera is a phone and I refuse to hear otherwise. Anyway if you use one of these, where do you put it. Left, right, higher up, behind a sheet of parchment paper. I have zero patience for a light box setup, I want to hear the lazy version.

Heard it before I saw it. Corner clipped the tailgate and now there's a chunk off the bottom corner the size of my fist sitting on the floor, and the block has a fresh white bruise where it hit. That corner was going to be the base. So now either the whole piece comes down four inches, or I cut it at an angle and pretend I meant to do that. I've done both before. The pretending works about half the time. Point is I should have used the sling and the chain hoist like I do for anything over fifty pounds. I've moved that block three times this month without a problem and got lazy on the fourth. That's how it always goes. Not the heavy lift, the easy one. Anyone else keep a stack of stone they cut wrong waiting for the day it turns into something. I've got a shelf of it. Some of it's been there eleven years.