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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.

ok so I spent like a month earlier this year obsessing over my instagram grid, scheduling posts, planning reels, the whole thing. had a notion doc and everything. and you know what happened? nothing. flat engagement, same followers, maybe one sale from it. then I had this week where I just said fuck it and made 40 tiny test tiles, different clay bodies, glazes I mixed myself, firing temps I'd never tried. just messing around, no end goal. I posted them ugly, in progress, some failed. just the real process, no polish. those posts outperformed everything I "planned" by a lot. like triple the saves, actual comments from other potters, and two commissions from people who saw the test tiles and wanted something in that glaze. I think the audience can smell when you're performing vs when you're actually doing the work. the planning was me trying to look like a serious business. the test tiles were me being a ceramicist. anyone else find that the stuff you don't overthink just lands better?

ok so i have this rule that i made for myself like a year ago, no painting after 10pm because i make genuinely deranged decisions with color when i'm tired and then i wake up and look at it and want to cry. but i've broken it three nights this week because i got obsessed with this one corner of my apartment where the light hits at night and it's like. i know i'm going to regret it tomorrow but i can't stop?? last night i mixed a color that was supposed to be a soft grey shadow and it came out looking like moldy avocado and i just kept going. this morning i covered it with white and started over and honestly i don't even know if i'm mad about it because something good might come out of the wreckage lol. does anyone else have a rule like this that you're constantly ignoring? or is it just me being bad at boundaries with my own work?

I've been waking up at 6 for the past week just to paint the same corner of my kitchen counter. The lime slice from last night, the steel tumbler from morning chai, the way the sun hits the grout between the tiles. It lasts maybe forty minutes and then it's gone, and I know it's ridiculous because I could just take a photo and paint it later. But it's not the same. There's something about catching it while it's happening, while the light is actually moving across the surface. I think this is my current obsession, I can only paint things in the moment they exist. If I photograph them and come back later, the feeling is gone. The urgency is gone. And the painting comes out flat. Anyone else have a weird time-of-day thing they can't let go of? Or am I the only one waking up unreasonably early for a lime slice and a steel glass 🙂

Working on a new screenprint series, and I keep getting stuck on the 'ghost' image. You know, the faint residue left on the screen after a print? It's not the 'real' image, but it has this strange, ephemeral quality. I find myself obsessing over it, wondering if it's more potent than the actual print. It feels like a memory of the image, or a potential for future images. Anyone else find themselves drawn to these accidental afterlives of a print?

ok so i don't know why i did this but i got obsessed with this stupid little ceramic mug my partner got me from a thrift store, it's this weird pale yellow-green with a chip on the handle, and i just kept painting it every morning with my coffee. same mug, same light, same angle, same rough setup on the windowsill. fourteen paintings of the exact same object. and it's genuinely taught me more about how watercolor handles light than anything i did in school??? like day three i finally stopped trying to "draw" the mug and started just trying to catch the way the shadow fell across the table. day seven i realized i'd been painting the background too warm every single time. day eleven i just sat there for twenty minutes before i even touched a brush because the light was doing something i'd never noticed before. i don't know if i'll ever show them to anyone, most of them are not good, lol, but i think i found my new morning ritual. it's like warming up before you run. except with coffee and a mug that's probably not gonna survive another move. anyone else have a weird little exercise they do that nobody asked for?