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ok so I'm at the art supply store today picking out watercolor paper, like actually taking my time because this stuff is expensive and I have a specific feel I'm going for for this piece I'm doing, and this older guy who works there comes up and goes "that stuff's overrated, you should try this" and hands me this cheap cold press that buckles if you breathe on it wrong. I said "oh thanks, I'm looking for the hot press actually" and he goes "no no, cold press is better for beginners, you'll get better results." like sir. I have a BFA. I have been painting with watercolor for eight years. I paint literally every single day. I did not ask for your opinion on my paper. and I just stood there holding my paper and being like "okay thanks" because I'm 26 and I still default to being polite and then I walked away and fumed about it the whole drive home. why do men do this. why is it always at the art store. I have never once had a woman employee at an art store assume I don't know what I'm doing. not once. anyway I bought the hot press and it's beautiful and I'm going to paint something really good on it out of spite. that's the plan.

I mix all my greens from primaries, which means a bad yellow poisons absolutely everything downstream. Opened the tube this morning, squeezed out a bead, and it's a pale, chalky, faintly pinkish ochre. Real Naples yellow is a dense, opaque, slightly warm cream, and it should sit in the leaf of a magnolia without a fight. This is the color of skimmed milk that's been left out. What bothers me is not the money. It is that the label is allowed to say Naples yellow, and it will go on saying it, and someone in a class will buy it and spend three weeks wondering why their whites look muddy. I've written to the manufacturer. I will not be sending a photograph, because I do not think this is a matter that requires one.

Went to restock on Arches paper today, expensive enough that I have to talk myself into it every time, and the guy ringing me up sees the blocks and goes "oh wow, you're brave, I could never do watercolor, too stressful, I don't have the patience." And I just stood there with my debit card out like 🙂 ok. Because what do you even say to that? It's not the first time I've heard it and it's always framed like I'm doing something weird and self-punishing instead of just... painting. Like it's some extreme sport. I don't go to the oil painting aisle and tell people they're brave for waiting three days for paint to dry. I know he meant it kindly. I know. But I'm so tired of watercolor being treated like the masochist's hobby when it's literally just the medium I fell in love with. Nobody tells a guitarist they're brave for playing acoustic. Anyway I bought the paper and went home and painted the same window I've painted forty times and it still came out wrong so maybe he had a point honestly

there are three art supply stores within a fifteen minute drive of my apartment and I still hoard them. it's pathological. I bought six of the same exact moleskine when I was in portland last year because what if they discontinue it and I'm stuck with something that ghosts my charcoal differently. the worst part is I only fill maybe two a year. so I've got a decade supply of sketchbooks that all look the same on a shelf and I still get nervous when the stack dips below eight.

there's a tube of phthalo blue in my drawer that's been glued shut for like four years and i still can't toss it. the paint inside is probably dry, but if i ever need that exact tube again... for what? the same pigment is in every art store in the city. i know this. i won't throw it out. i think it's because it survived the bad year. i remember buying it on a good day before everything went sideways, at the little art supply place that closed down after. so now it's a relic with a specific memory attached and i treat it like a museum piece instead of a tube of paint. anyway i have a drawer of emotional support art supplies now. most of it is garbage. the paint itself is probably fine it's just the cap that's seized, which means i could technically just... cut the end of the tube off. i should do that. i won't, though. it's been four years. it's earned its retirement. 💀

A small shop on Rua de Cedofeita asked if I could supply twelve small cyanotypes for their Christmas table. Twelve is not many. I said I would think about it and then thought about it for three weeks, which is embarrassing to admit. The money was fine. What I kept turning over was the word supply. If I make twelve in a batch, in one week, with the same mix and the same paper, they will be almost the same. Almost. Cyanotype does not really let you repeat. The sun here in November is weak and low, so a print that took twenty minutes in July takes an hour and a half now, and it shows, the blue goes softer. Seawater I collect at Foz, sometimes it is clear, sometimes full of sand after a storm. So twelve pieces that are meant to be identical will be twelve small arguments with the weather. I do not want to be the person who makes the same print twelve times. I also do not want to be precious about it, because a shop shelf is a real place and real people, and I am not so busy that I can pretend otherwise. In the end I said yes to six, different sizes, and told them plainly that no two will match. They seemed happy. I am still not sure if I was protecting the work or just stalling. If you make things by hand, how do you decide when a batch is still yours and when it has become a product? I genuinely do not know where that line sits for me.

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 bought a pack of those super cheap synthetic brushes at Michael's a few months ago, like $8 for a dozen, just to beat up on for texture work and practice pieces. And now I reach for them almost every time over the nice ones my husband got me for Christmas. They're not even good brushes. The ferrule is wobbly and one of them is already shedding. But they're the exact right stiffness for how I actually paint, and I'm not scared to mess them up. That's the thing. The nice ones sit in the jar and I keep talking myself out of using them because what if I ruin them. Meanwhile the $8 ones are doing all the real work. I think I need to just give the good ones to a purpose. Use them on a piece I actually care about and stop treating them like they're museum pieces. Anyone else have brushes they are weirdly protective of and never use? Or am I just hoarding nice art supplies like everybody does.

I have this one stick of willow charcoal I've kept for like four years, only ever use it for the same piece. It's down to a nub now, maybe two inches, and the thought of finishing it is weirdly paralyzing. Every time I pick it up I think this might be the last pass it's got in it. I know that's not rational. I could buy a hundred more for twelve bucks. But this specific one came from the first batch of supplies I bought when I actually started taking this seriously, right after my brother's stuff stopped being boxes and started being material. So it's got history in it, whatever that means. Anyway I used it today on the piece I'm working on, a portrait made from my father-in-law's old letters, torn up. And it's fine. It's just charcoal. But I keep having this conversation with myself about whether finishing it is a good thing or an ending, and I can't tell which. Do other people do this with a tool? Hold onto the last of something like it's going to vanish when it's gone?

A lady from Montgomery commissioned a queen-sized quilt, wanted it in her mother's old dresses and a Sunday shirt her daddy used to wear. I charged her $450 and felt a little bad about it at the time, like I was asking a lot. Well I counted it up honest. Sorting those dresses, taking them apart at the seams so the cloth laid right, the piecing, the quilting, binding. Sixty-one hours across three weeks. That come out to about $7.38 an hour and I supplied the batting and thread out of my own pocket. And I still felt bad asking for the $450. I told my granddaughter and she just looked at me like I'd lost my mind. She said grandma, you spent a whole week and a half of your life down there at that machine. And she wasn't wrong. But it's a funny thing, this work, you grow up where the women never charged for a quilt, you gave one for a wedding or a baby or to somebody whose house burned. Money on it still feels a little bit like shame to me sometimes. I know better in my head. Getting there in my chest is another matter. That $450 quilt is on her bed right now with her mama's plaid and her daddy's Sunday shirt all in it. And I'd do it again for the same money, if I'm honest. That's the part that really ought to bother me. 🙂

was at an estate sale this weekend, said i was looking at a box of old photographs. just looking. woman running the sale walks over, all friendly, says "oh those are nice, you could cut them up and make something pretty." i stood there holding a picture of someones grandmother and felt genuinely sick for a second. like no, margaret, actually you cant. that's somebody's whole face. that's somebody's whole life in a cardboard box for 3 dollars and i'm supposed to be the one who makes it palatable. she saw my face and laughed. "or not! whatever you artists do." i bought them anyway. all of them. box was 12 bucks. they're on my kitchen table now and i can't touch one without feeling like i owe them something. which is probably why i'm an artist and she sells dead people's lampshades. nothing wrong with that. but don't tell me what to do with a stranger's face like it's craft supplies.

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.

Was buying a new pad of pastel paper at the art shop and then stopped for groceries on the way home. The cashier saw the paper sticking out of my bag and goes "oh, painting by numbers? my grandma does those." I just said no and smiled. But I've been thinking about it all evening. Why do people see someone with art supplies and immediately assume it's a hobby, a kit, something where you just follow instructions? Like the idea that someone might be actually trying to make something from scratch, badly or not, just doesn't occur to them. And I know it's not a big deal. It's a random comment from a stranger. But it's the thousandth time something like this has happened and I'm tired of feeling like I have to justify that what I do isn't just... coloring inside someone else's lines. Anyway. Put down a portrait tonight that I hated and scraped off with a razor. At least that was my own bad decision, start to finish.

Ok so I just finished off a tube of French ultramarine that I bought second year of my BFA. Second year. That's like six years of a single tube of paint, which sounds insane until you remember how little you need of it, a dot does so much work. And now the tube is split at the seam and I keep squeezing it like there's something left and there isn't, and I'm sitting here at my desk genuinely a little sad?? about a tube of paint. it's not even a sentimental object, it's not like my dad's brushes or anything, it's just that I bought it with money from a summer job I hated and I had no idea what I was doing and I thought you were supposed to buy the fancy brand and now I know I could've gotten the cheap one and been fine. And I've made probably forty paintings with it. Some of them are bad. A few are good. The window one from last spring is mostly this color. Anyway I ordered a new one and it's coming Tuesday and it will not feel the same at all, which is stupid, it's literally the same pigment, same brand, same everything. Except it won't be. Does anyone else get attached to supplies like this or am I just being dramatic because I'm avoiding the underpainting I'm supposed to be doing

Okay so the tape. Not a fresh roll, the same four strips I've been reusing since like March, stuck to the edge of my glass palette so they don't lose their tack. My partner watched me peel one off this morning, press it back down, and just said "we have a whole drawer of that." We do. I know we do. The thing is these four strips have the exact right amount of stick left. New tape rips the paper when I lift it, old tape gives up halfway through a big wet wash and the whole sheet buckles and I have to sit there watching it curl like it's personally disappointed in me. So I keep them. They've got paint on them now, a reddish smear from that cadmium I use way too much of, and one corner is folded over from the day I was rushing to get the light on the window before it moved. I don't think this is a cute habit, I think it's probably a small problem and I'm telling on myself. But every time I go to grab a fresh strip I do the little satisfaction check first, tap the paper, and the used ones always win. Anyone else hoarding a supply that's technically garbage because the replacement behaves wrong? I need to know I'm not the only one with a tape problem, or honestly, I need someone to tell me to just use the new roll.

Okay so I finally caved and bought a tube of genuine terre verte after two years of telling myself the synthetic mix was fine. It was $34. It's a tiny tube. And the second I laid it down I got it, because the synthetic one goes gray-blue and this one just sits there being green, like moss on a rock, it doesn't go anywhere it doesn't want to. Which is annoying honestly because now I have opinions. I'm the person with opinions about dirt now. The thing is I quit my café job in March and every single supply purchase feels like a moral decision. I stood in the aisle doing math on my phone. I know exactly how many tubes of this I could have bought with one shift, and I bought it anyway, and I've been painting a study of the window with the fire escape for two weeks and yesterday the shadow on the sill finally came out right because of it. My mom asked what I did today and I said "I bought some dirt" and she laughed for a solid minute. She's not wrong. Anyway I'm not going back to the synthetic one, that's the whole post.

did the math today while mixing and my burnt umber is now older than some of the apps i use. 2020, lockdown, i panic-bought the gallon jug because the small tubes kept running out and i was convinced the world was ending and i'd never get another one. the world did not end. i have used maybe a fifth of it. anyway it's the only color i've never had to think about. everything else i'm scraping the bottom of the tube like a raccoon, but the umber just sits there, enormous, smug, will outlive me. i pour it out on the palette like i'm feeding a horse. ngl there's something nice about one material being a non-issue. one whole thing in the studio with zero anxiety attached. the rest of the shelf is a graveyard of dried-out caps and regret. what's the supply you overbought in a panic and now have a weird relationship with

I was reorganizing my supplies this week and counted eleven jars of water sitting around the studio in various states of use. Eleven. My husband walked in, looked at the collection, and asked if I was conducting an experiment. I told him I was, and had been for thirty years. People economize on paint, on paper, on brushes, and I understand all of it. But water is the variable I will not cut corners on. A tired wash full of lifted pigment is the difference between a leaf that looks alive and one that looks painted. When I teach, I make students change their water after every third wash and they always think I'm being precious. Then they see the two paintings side by side and they stop arguing. Distilled water for mixing, tap for cleaning, and never the two shall meet. I know it sounds like superstition. Maybe it is, at this point. But there's a particular blue-gray that only appears in water that's been sitting overnight, and I've learned to recognize it the way you'd recognize a bad mood in a friend. Some days I paint with it anyway, just to see what happens.

I've been using Sennelier oil sticks for years. Usually reliable, a bit soft in warm weather but nothing you can't work around. The one I bought last week, a raw umber, came out of the tube with the consistency of toothpaste that's been left uncapped all night. Crumbly, dry, almost no oil feel at all. I had to break it up and mix it with stand oil just to get it to stick to the knife. I emailed the supplier. They said it's a known issue with a batch from the summer. No recall, but they'd replace it if I sent photos. Which I did, but I'm stuck on the fact that they knew and still shipped it. That's three tubes of paint I've had problems with this year across different brands and I'm starting to wonder if the supply chain issues everyone talked about in 2022 are still showing up now as rushed batches and bad checks. Anyway. The raw umber is fine now after the intervention. But I shouldn't have to doctor a Sennelier stick like it's cheap student grade. Anybody else hit a dud batch lately or is it just me.

I had a piece in a group show last spring. Small gallery, decent neighborhood foot traffic. They took 40% commission. That's fine, I know the deal, rent's real. But I also had to pay for my own framing. Print the postcards myself. Supply the wine for the opening. They asked if I could "activate my network" on social and tag them in stories every day leading up to it. So I'm paying to make the work, paying to present it, doing their marketing for them, and they take 40% of whatever sells. And I walked away thinking I was lucky to be there. I don't have a tidy conclusion. I'm still trying to figure out which part of this is normal and which part is getting played. Because I keep hearing about how the model is broken for artists but I don't see a lot of alternatives that aren't just "go viral on tiktok" which is its own kind of nonsense.