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There's this old bungalow on Convent Road, the kind with a deep verandah and blue trim and a neem tree that must be a hundred years old. I sketched it first in 2021, just passing by. Did a proper watercolour in 2022. Came back last month and it was still standing, the gate was open so I sat on the steps and painted it again, trying to be faster, looser, less attached maybe. It's gone now. I walked past yesterday and it's just rubble and a JCB parked on top of it. I don't know why I'm posting this in wins except, I caught it three times. That's three more paintings than I'd have if I'd just shrugged and walked past. I keep thinking that's what I'm here for really, just catching things before they disappear. It's not sad exactly. It's what I do.

weird thing i noticed about myself. i can paint alone in my flat for six hours and feel like im wasting my life. but the second someone walks past the window and slows down to look, suddenly im an Artist with a capital A, posture fixed, very serious about the brush. is it just me or is the whole thing a bit of a performance and we just don't admit it

Still sitting in the corner of the shop. A five-foot chunk of Indiana limestone I took on six years ago. Customer wanted a figure, paid half up front, then disappeared. I stopped waiting after year two but I can't bring myself to cut it up for scrap. Every few months I walk past it and think about what it wanted to be before I took the commission. I knew better. You never take on work you don't believe in just because the money's good. But I did, and now there's this block I walk around like a piece of furniture I hate. Anyone else got a piece like that? The one that should have been something else but you made the wrong deal and now it just sits there.

I've painted probably 40 or 50 pieces since I picked this back up, and I think I've kept exactly three. The rest go to family, friends, the local fair, or sit stacked in the corner of my office waiting to be dealt with. I don't know why I'm so weird about keeping them. Almost like keeping one for myself feels indulgent or presumptuous or something. Anyway. This weekend I finally framed one I did back in January, a little still life with pears and a blue cloth, and hung it in the kitchen above the coffee maker. Every time I walk past it I stop and look at it for a second. It's not perfect but it's mine and I like seeing it there. My 8-year-old said "that looks like real pears" which might be the best review I've ever gotten. Anyone else struggle to keep what they make?

early in my career a gallery "offered" to represent me but wanted me to pay for the opening, drinks, food, invitations, the whole thing. i knew it was off but i was so desperate for a yes i almost did it anyway. thank god my friend talked me out of it. what's the worst red flag you walked past because you wanted the opportunity too much? the thing you look back on and cringe at yourself for almost agreeing to

Myself Ramesh, Mithila painter from Madhubani. All my life I sold through the cooperative or when someone came to the house. Tourists sometimes, or people from the city who heard about the village where the painting women are. My son, he is in Patna for his job, he took photos of maybe eight of my pieces, a fish with the lotus, a Durga, two peacocks, some others. He put them on WhatsApp status and also in some groups he is in. I did not think much of it. Now in the last month I have sent six paintings by courier. To Delhi. To Bangalore. To one address in Dubai even, a man whose mother is from Darbhanga originally and he wanted something for his wall. These people never touched the paper, never saw the pigment. They saw a phone photo and they trusted it. This is strange to me. In my market, the buyer wants to see the line work up close, wants to know the colour is natural, wants to hold it. But my son says this is how it works now. I am grateful, truly, but also I am thinking, what if the photo does not show the real thing? I use geru and rice paste and lamp black, the photo cannot show that. But the buyers are happy when the parcel arrives. I do not understand this new way but I cannot argue with the orders. Anyone else selling traditional craft online and feeling this same confusion?🙂

There's this little stall near Majestic, been there for maybe thirty years, the kind where the guy remembers your order even if you haven't shown up in six months. I've been sketching it off and on for the past year because the light there in the late afternoon is just ridiculous. The blue tarpaulin, the steel glasses glinting, the way the steam catches the sun. Anyway, the metro pillar markers have appeared. Orange paint on the footpath. Surveyors with their tripods. The stall itself is still there but you can see it coming, the road widening, the barricades, the slow disappearance. I painted it again yesterday and found myself being too careful with every line. Like if I got it right enough I could keep it there by sheer effort. That's the thing with painting old Bangalore, na? You're not just capturing something, you're also saying goodbye to it in advance. And you do it anyway because what else is there to do.

I bought a little slab and muller during my atelier years because the old masters did it and I was insufferable. Ground up some vermilion from pigment powder. It's beautiful, obviously, that weight, that warmth, nothing else like it. But the powder gets everywhere. You breathe it. You're dusted in it. And then you find out it's mercury sulfide and you've been breathing mercury all afternoon. I still have the slab. I use it maybe once a year for a specific warm note I can't mix. The rest of the time I buy my paint from a block of cobalts and earths like a normal person and try not to romanticise the past too much. Some things were better left to the apprentices.

After twenty-five years I should be past these小小的 superstitions, but I remain convinced that nothing handles a fine rigger like a good old Kolinsky sable. I bought a highly recommended synthetic equivalent last month, told myself I was being modern and sensible. Used it this morning on a Passiflora study and ended up cleaning it off mid-stroke to switch back. The spring is wrong, the point doesn't hold, and the paint release feels all wrong to me. I know the ethical arguments, and I respect them. But I wonder how many other people quietly hoard their natural-hair brushes and simply don't admit to it.

For years I tagged every studio photo with the exact spot, Porto, Matosinhos, the beach name, the café where I dry the paper. Thought it helped people find me locally. And maybe it did. But a few months ago I just stopped. Posted a cyanotype of a cuttlebone I found at sunrise, no location, nothing. A woman I'd never seen walked into the studio three days later holding her phone with the post on it. She lives in the building next to mine. She said she'd walked past my door for two years and never knew what happened inside until she saw that bone and recognised the light. Made me think about how much we over-explain ourselves online trying to be findable, while the people right next to us have no idea we exist. Maybe the real local marketing is just being specific enough that someone local recognises their own morning in your work.

This morning I made fresh gum from tamarind seeds for binding the colours. Soaking, peeling the thin brown skin, grinding the white kernel into paste. My mother used to do this and her mother before. When I was small I would sit and watch her, the slow grinding stone, the patience. Now my own hands do it and I think: this is the same gesture, passing down. We have readymade binder available in the market now, many artists use it. But for me the natural gum feels like part of the painting itself. The colour holds different. More alive maybe. Or maybe just I am old fashioned. 🙂 The kitchen smelled slightly sour this morning from the soaking. My wife said "again you are doing this Ramesh, the vessels will all get stained." But she knows. She left the mortar out for me. Anyone else here still make their own materials? Or am I the only one who cannot let go of these old ways.

So I've been doing this thing where I quote what feels scary high, trying to push past the old numbers. Last month a woman reached out about a memorial piece, wanted me to work with her dad's old survey maps, some letters, a few other things. I took a breath and said $1,200. She said "perfect" before I even finished the sentence. Which should feel great, right? Instead I spent the whole week thinking I could've said $1,800 and she would've said the same thing. I don't know where the ceiling is because I've never hit it. I'm just guessing in the dark and every time someone says yes I feel like I lost a negotiation I didn't know I was in.

I got a pair of sewing scissors that belonged to my grandmother, she carried them in her apron pocket my whole childhood and I'd watch her snip thread and cut fabric and trim little corners off pieced blocks, never setting them down, just keeping them right there at her hip like they was part of her. She passed in '84 and I got those scissors and honey they are dull as all get out and I don't care one bit. I could get them sharpened, I know I could. But it feels wrong somehow, like I'd be erasing the wear she put in them. Every little nick and gap in the blade is from her hand. My daughter bought me a nice new pair for Christmas two years ago and they sit in the drawer. I use them when I have to. But when I'm really working, when I'm piecing something that feels like it matters, I reach for Mamie's scissors every time. They pull at the fabric more than they cut it sometimes. And that's alright with me. Anybody else got a tool they keep using past when they should? Or am I just being sentimental?

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 🙂

I was digging through the closet looking for my good brushes, the ones I hide from the kids, and I pulled out this canvas I'd completely forgotten about. A little barn scene I started in a workshop back in 2021 and then gave up on because I couldn't get the shadows right on the roof. I sat there holding it for a minute, and I could see exactly what I was doing wrong back then. So I mixed up some Payne's grey and burnt umber and fixed it in about ten minutes. Ten minutes! Three years of sitting in a dark closet and it just needed a little patience and a better eye. Felt weirdly nice. Like giving past-me a hand. Anyone else ever rescue an old abandoned piece?

pulled an old canvas out of the closet today that i started in like... 2021. deep in the bad year. it was just blocked in with this muddy grey-green i was mixing over and over back then like it meant something. couldn't finish it. couldn't throw it out either. finally figured out what it wanted today. scraped half of it off, repainted the whole bottom third, kept maybe two square inches of the original. it's done now. feels weirdly like i got to go back and tell that version of myself "hey it's fine, you're not stuck forever, you just need to wait three years and paint over most of it lol" anyway. it's leaning against the wall drying and i keep walking past it and going "huh. okay. it's good." feels like i earned that one.

i have like fifteen bisque-fired pieces just sitting on a shelf waiting for glaze and i keep adding to it instead of finishing them. started a new face vase this morning because i got distracted by a photo of my grandmother from the 80s and wanted to try the hair shape. now my shelf is fuller and my glazing queue is longer and i'm pretending i don't see it. the thing is i KNOW the glaze step is where pieces actually become themselves or die but there's something about the raw bisque that feels so perfect?? like this fragile little ghost of what it could be. i'll ruin half of them in the kiln anyway so maybe i'm just stalling the heartbreak lol. anyone else have a graveyard of unfinished work that you walk past every day? or is it just my adhd clay collection

Was in a church in the old town today, not for work, just wandered in. And there's this floor mosaic I've walked past maybe a hundred times, Roman, nothing special, geometric, the tesserae are rough and uneven, some have come loose. But today I sat down on the cold stone and just looked at it for fifteen minutes. Some woman thought I was having a crisis. I was having a crisis actually. Crisis of admiration. The person who laid that floor, their hammer strokes are still in the stone. Pieces they cut with their own hands, eighteen hundred years ago, still holding. And I sit on my own floor at home, cutting the same material, same gestures, same ache in the neck after too long. I don't know why it hit me today and not the other times. Maybe I needed it to. Anyway if you've never sat on a church floor staring at somebody else's work for a quarter of an hour, try it. Feels strange and good.

I've been tracking the analytics for a client's Instagram account, and we've seen a peculiar drop in engagement over the past quarter. Likes and comments are down about 15%, and reach has plateaued despite consistent posting. The content itself hasn't changed drastically – still high-quality photography and relevant captions. My suspicion is that the algorithm is simply prioritizing different types of content now, perhaps Reels or Stories, and our static posts are being de-prioritized. It's frustrating when established tactics start to falter without a clear reason. Has anyone else observed a similar shift recently?

I have this cheap halogen work lamp from Obi, the kind on a tripod, the kind that makes the room unbearable after an hour. I bought it when I was sharing a studio in Wedding and it's followed me through three studios since. I don't turn it off. Even when I leave. Even for weeks when I'm in Bologna. I come back and it's still there, burning, casting that horrible orange light on nothing. I know this is wasteful and probably dangerous. But there's something about coming back to a space where the light was already on. Like the work never fully stopped waiting for me. Like the room was keeping time without me. The bulb has to be ten thousand hours past its rated life by now. I keep waiting for it to die so I can finally buy a normal LED and have a normal studio practice like an adult. But it won't. And I won't replace it until it does. Is this a superstition or just procrastination dressed up as ritual? I genuinely don't know anymore.