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i've been working on this portrait commission for two weeks. today she sends me the "final reference", it's one of those apps that smooths everything into plastic. no pores, no shadows under the eyes, the nose is literally a different shape. she looks like a sim character. i don't know how to tell her that i can't paint what isn't there. that the thing i'm actually good at is catching the light on somebody's actual face, the uneven bits, the way one eye is slightly smaller. that's the whole point of spending hours on pastel portraits instead of just running her photo through the same filter she already used. i said i'd send her some progress sketches this week and i'm dreading it. probably going to do a version that's technically accurate and a version that looks like her filtered face and let her pick. which feels wrong but i don't have the words to explain why.

I spent the whole afternoon yesterday just looking at my kitchen table. Not painting it. Not photographing it. Just watching how the light moved across the surface of a wooden bowl, a half-empty glass, a cloth I'd left crumpled. From about 3:30 to 5, the quality of it, that cold winter light coming in low, bouncing off the building across the street, was something I could never invent and could never capture with a camera. The photos I took are dead. Flat. They have all the information and none of the truth. It makes me wonder how much time I've wasted collecting reference images when I should have been training my eye to hold what it sees. The camera is a crutch. A useful one, I use it too. But it flattens everything into information, and painting is not about information.

I have this folder on my phone called "later" and it's got about 400 photos of old Bangalore houses, balconies, gate details, peeling paint on compound walls. I scroll through it constantly but I won't paint from most of them. There's no logic to it. Some of them are gorgeous, the light is doing exactly what I love. But I've decided they're not ready, and I don't know what "ready" even means. It's been two years of this folder growing. The houses themselves aren't waiting around for me. Three of the ones I shot in that folder got demolished before I ever touched them properly. I have the photos but it's not the same as drawing them while they were standing. My husband says just paint them, you're hoarding them like a miser. He's right, of course he's right. Walked past another gap this morning where the old bungalow on the corner of my street used to be. I keep getting outsketched by the wrecking ball, honestly. So today I'm going to open the folder, pick one actual house, and paint it. Even if it's terrible. Especially if it's terrible, maybe.

I said yes because I felt for him. Grief makes people weird and I get it. But he sent me ONE photo of this dog, taken from like 20 feet away, half in shadow, and the dog was black so it's basically just a shape with ears. I spent 12 hours on this painting working from that and reference photos of similar breeds and he picks it up today and goes "I dunno, his nose was warmer than that." His nose. Was warmer. Than that. I wanted to say bro you sent me a photo where I can't even tell if the dog has eyes. I wanted to say the nose is gray because the dog was black and standing in shade and that's literally what color it was in the ONLY IMAGE YOU GAVE ME. I wanted to say I painted this thing with more care than I've painted anything in months because I knew it mattered to you. But I just said "I can glaze some warmth in" and he left looking disappointed and now I'm sitting here furious at myself for taking the commission and furious at him for not understanding what he was asking for and furious at the photo and furious at the whole thing. Why do we do this. Why do we take jobs we know are going to make us feel like this. Because we need money? Because we want to be helpful? Because we're so desperate to prove we can do it that we ignore every red flag? Anyway. He's coming back Saturday. I'm gonna put some warm brown in the nose area and try not to scream.

Tried plein air for the first time last Sunday. Picked a little spot by the creek, got all set up, and the wind just wrecked me. My easel tipped over twice, a leaf landed wet side down right in the middle of my sky, and I packed it up after about forty minutes with maybe ten minutes of actual painting done. But here's the thing. I got more done in those ten minutes than I do in a whole afternoon of painting from photos. The light on the water was doing something I've never been able to fake in the studio. I've been chasing that same look for weeks from reference photos and it's always flat. Now I'm looking at those little wind-proof clamps for the canvas and a heavier easel, and I keep checking the forecast for a calm day. I think this is my new thing. Just wish I'd tried it before I turned forty.

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.

I did a custom portrait commission for a friend of a friend back in February. Watercolor, 9x12, pretty detailed reference photo of her dog who had just passed away. I quoted her $80 because I was still in my "I have no idea what I'm doing and I'm terrified to ask for money" phase and also she was nice and sad about her dog. 14 hours. I literally tracked it because at some point I was like wait this is getting absurd. $5.70 an hour. I had to buy a new tube of burnt sienna halfway through because I ran out, which was $12, so make that even less. She framed it and sent me a photo and I was happy she loved it. But I also wanted to cry a little bit. I think about that commission a lot now that I'm trying to take this seriously. Like what would I charge today? Probably $300 minimum. And even that feels like I'm making it up. I don't know when that stops feeling fake honestly.

Working on a portrait from a reference photo I found in an old magazine, some woman I've never seen before. And I get to the mouth and I keep redrawing it and it's not working, and then I step back and realise, it's my mother's mouth. The upper lip thinner, the way the corner tucks in. I didn't put it there on purpose. It just came out of my hand. I don't even have a great relationship with my mother. So that's unsettling. Has your hand ever just. Drawn something from your life without asking you first? Like the muscle memory knows things you don't want it to know?

Still fuming about this from Saturday. I was at an open studio thing, just working on a portrait of an old woman I'd taken a reference photo of at the market. Her face is all lines and light, it took me maybe six hours to get the softness right in the cheek shadows, pastel is not forgiving if you rush it. This woman comes up, looks at it for maybe three seconds, and goes "oh, so realistic. It looks just like a photo. So where's the art in that then?" I just said "well, the photo is right there" and pointed at my phone. She didn't even look. Just walked off. And I sat there thinking, I spent a year learning how to not make pastel look muddy. I know exactly where every highlight on that face came from. I changed the light source entirely from the reference because the original was too flat. But sure. No art. Just copying, right? I didn't say any of that to her. I just smiled and went back to work. But I keep replaying it. Why do people think realism is just... cheating? Like there's no decision-making involved? Anyway. Just needed to put it somewhere. 😅

Someone asked me yesterday what my price list is and I had to say out loud that I don't have one, and I have been taking portrait commissions for three years. What I have is this: I look at the reference photo, I decide how hard the face is going to be, and I say a number. Soft round face with good light, 350 zł. Sharp bones, tricky eyes, four hours just on the nose, 600 zł. It is not a price list, it is an anxiety reading. And it has been mostly fine, which is the worst part, because it means I never had to fix it. Then in March I did two pastels the same size, both A3 on grey Canson, both heads. One was a man I liked, easy face, done in two evenings. 350 zł. The other was a woman with very dark skin in a strong window light, and I fought with the values for a week and a half, maybe eleven hours total, and I charged her 400. So I made less per hour on the harder one. Of course I did. The harder ones are the ones I am scared to put a number on. I am not writing this to ask what to charge, I know what the answer is, I want to raise it and I am just not doing it. I am writing it because saying it here is the closest I get to doing anything about it. If I put 500 zł on my page tomorrow I think my hands would shake a bit while typing it.

So I did this commission last month, a little wedding gift thing, couple's pet portrait in watercolor, their dog who passed away. They had a reference photo and I got so attached to the story I underpriced it on purpose, like €120 for what I told myself was "a quick 6 hours." It was not quick. I did a full sketch, hated it, redrew the dog's face three times because watercolor doesn't let you fix a bad eye, you just start over. Real time ended up around 14 hours, plus paper, plus I ruined two sheets. When I did the math afterward I made like €6 an hour. My old café job paid better and I didn't have to cry over a dog's nose shape at 1am. The worst part is they were so happy and the painting came out genuinely good, one of my favorites I've ever done. So now I'm sitting here like, do I charge the next person with a sad story €400 and feel like a monster, or do I keep doing this and slowly fund my own studio out of my own pocket?? I know the answer obviously but I keep needing strangers on the internet to tell me I'm allowed to charge for the hours that actually happened, not the hours I hoped would happen.

There's this face I keep coming back to. Not anyone I know, just a reference photo I found ages ago, some woman with sharp cheekbones and tired eyes. I've drawn her maybe twelve times now in pastel. Different angles, different lighting, different paper colours. Most of them are bad. But I can't stop. Yesterday I finished another one and just sat there thinking... why her? What is it about this particular face that won't let me go? Maybe I'm trying to nail something I can't articulate. Maybe it's just comfort, like rewatching the same film. Anyone else have that one subject they keep circling back to? Not in a series way, just obsessively.

A friend from the parents at my daughter's school. She knows I paint. She asked me to do a portrait of her daughter, a nice photo reference she had, the girl in a garden, good light actually. I said yes, I'd be happy to, and told her my price for a bust-length oil on linen, 40 x 50 cm, which is 1 200 €. She paused and said: "But you'll enjoy doing it." Not in a nasty way. She genuinely thought that because I would like the work, it shouldn't cost as much. As if pleasure and payment are opposites. As if a baker shouldn't charge for bread because he likes to bake. I explained that enjoying my work doesn't mean my time and materials are free, and that the years I spent learning to paint a child's face well enough that she'd want to hang it are part of what she's paying for. She said she'd think about it. She hasn't replied. I don't blame her exactly. Nobody taught her what this costs. But I'm tired of explaining that my enjoyment of the work doesn't subtract from the price, it's the whole reason the work is any good in the first place.

Someone asked me to paint their grandmother's house in Malleswaram, the one being sold, about to be knocked down for yet another apartment block. They wanted it as a gift for the whole family. I was so touched by the reason I just said ₹3,000 without thinking. Then I actually did it. Reference photo was terrible, old phone pic, bad lighting, half the house hidden behind a tree. I had to go there twice to sketch it properly, spent a full Sunday morning sitting on the kerb drawing, then another two days painting at home. The house had this lovely old chettah-style window detail and I ended up redoing the whole thing because the first wash went muddy. So that's roughly 20 hours of work for ₹3,000. ₹150 an hour. Less than what I pay my domestic help. The family loved it, cried actually, and that's worth something. But I sat there thinking, why do we do this to ourselves? Because the story was good? Because saying a real number felt awkward? I wouldn't ask my plumber to work for ₹150 an hour. Still haven't figured out what I should have charged. ₹8,000? ₹12,000? I honestly don't know what a fair rate is for this kind of thing in Bangalore. What do you all charge for a detailed architectural watercolour, a full house, not just a loose sketch?

Painted a still life tonight at the kitchen table after the kids went down. Same table we ate spaghetti at two hours earlier. I wiped it down, laid out the drop cloth, and there's still a smear of tomato sauce on the corner of my reference photo that I just decided to live with. I used to feel bad about not having a real studio space. Read all these posts about people's dedicated rooms with north light and proper easels and I'd get all wistful. But honestly the kitchen table works. The light is awful. The cat walks across my palette at least twice a session. My 8 year old stuck a drawing of a dinosaur to the easel I can't even use because there's no room for it. But it's the only uninterrupted hour I get and I'll take it. Finished a decent little pear study tonight, better than my last one. That's the whole win. Packed it up and now I'm eating leftover spaghetti over the sink like a civilized person. Who else is painting on a dining room table or a folding tray or wherever they can grab space?

This one old man in a market, reference photo I took last summer and kept coming back to. Drew him maybe seven times this month, every attempt slightly better and still wrong. The eyes kept coming out too open, too kind. He's not kind, you can see it in the real photo. He's worn. Yesterday I stopped trying so hard. Smudged the whole left side of the face down with my finger without thinking and then worked back from the mess. And it just. Was him. Not my version of him, him. I almost didn't post it because I still don't trust that feeling when something clicks. Like it's a fluke and tomorrow I won't remember how I got there. But I liked it. That's the win, I think, that I liked it before I started picking it apart.

Dragged out the old portfolio tonight to find a reference photo and there it was, this charcoal piece from 2016. Before I knew anything. Before I'd burned through a hundred bad drawings. And here's the thing. It's good. Like, actually good. The hand is a little off and the proportions aren't right but god the FEELING in it. That rawness. I remember being so embarrassed by that piece I almost threw it away. I thought because it wasn't technically right it wasn't worth anything. Now I'm sitting here with the work I've made this month, cleaner, more confident, and I keep thinking, I want some of that back. That person didn't know what she was doing and she didn't care. She just needed to get it OUT. I don't know if you get more naive as you learn or what. But I'm going to try something tomorrow. I'm going to paint like I don't know anything. See what comes up. Scared it'll be shit. Scared it'll be the best thing I've made in years. Maybe both.

I finally raised my rate after almost a year of being stuck. I paint pet portraits in watercolor (I know, I know, but people really love their dogs) and I was charging €90 for an 8x10. Did the math on one and it was about 14 euros an hour after materials and the days I spent redoing the eyes. Embarrassing. So I went up to €125 and I was SICK about it for a week. Convinced nobody would book. The first person to take me up on it was a repeat client, the one who commissions a portrait every time her dog does something cute, the person I was literally scared to lose. She didn't even blink. Just sent a reference photo. And now I'm annoyed at myself for how long I sat at a number I secretly knew was too low. Fear of pricing yourself out is so loud and the actual evidence was right there the whole time. Anyone else got one of those "I waited way too long to raise it" moments?

Okay so I've been trying to figure out why I'm exhausted at the end of the day but somehow only have like one small painting to show for it. So I started actually timing myself. Set a little timer on my phone every time I sat down, every time I walked away. The result is honestly embarrassing. Over a four hour stretch today I painted for maybe 90 minutes. The rest was: staring at the reference photo, rearranging my brushes, looking at the same wash dry, texting my mom twice, going to get water and then just standing in the kitchen for a while. The actual sitting and committing part is way shorter than I thought it was. The weird thing is the paint time is so much better quality. When I actually clock in, I make decisions so much faster. But the gap between "okay I'm starting" and actually putting paint down is where all the energy goes. My new thing this week is a 25 minute timer, no phone in the room, and I don't get up until it dings. Even if I just sit there. Tried it today and got a whole sketch done in the first two rounds. Anyone else have no idea how much of their studio time is actually fear management? Because I think I'm maybe 40% painter and 60% pacing around thinking about painting.

Okay so I'm still pretty new to pricing my own work without a professor or a gallery telling me what to do and I think I massively undershot this one. A friend-of-a-friend reached out wanting a custom piece, her cat, sitting in a sunny windowsill, very specific reference photo she sent, gorgeous light honestly I was excited about it. I quoted $150 for a 16x20 watercolor which is like... insane when I actually stop and think about it. That's easily 15-20 hours of work when you factor in the back-and-forth and the sketching and the masking and the layering and fixing the thing I inevitably mess up. I did the math after I sent the message and it came out to like $8 an hour and I just sat there staring at my phone. I'm not mad at her she was thrilled with the price obviously lol. I'm mad at me. I keep doing this thing where I price based on what I think someone will pay instead of what the work is actually worth. And I KNOW better. I had a whole class on this. But when it's real and there's a real person on the other end asking nicely I just fold and throw out a number that feels "fair" to them and not to me. Anyway she's picking it up tomorrow and I'm gonna smile and take the cash and then I'm gonna spend the whole evening updating my rate sheet so I don't do this again. For the fifth time. 🫠 Anyone else have a number they immediately regretted the second it left their mouth?