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Commissioned portrait of a woman's mother, from an old photo. Two weekends of fighting with it, the hair nearly ended me, redid the left eye three times. I came out to about 16 hours and I charged 400 zł. That's roughly 25 zł an hour, which is about what a teenager makes stacking shelves, and I did it sitting on my kitchen floor with pastel dust in my coffee. The worst part isn't even the money. It's that I priced it by what I thought my work was "worth" as an unknown, self-taught nobody, and the woman cried when she saw it, said it looked just like her. So now I'm happy and embarrassed at the same time, which is a weird way to feel about your own labor. I keep going back and forth on what a fair price would even be. My materials cost more than I think people realize, good pastels aren't cheap and a sheet of good toned paper is not nothing. And time is time, nobody gets it back. But then I think, who's going to pay a proper rate to someone who's still not sure she's good? That's the trap. I walk into it every time. Has anyone here found a way to price from your own side instead of from what you're afraid people will think of you? Because I clearly can't do it on my own.<｜end▁of▁thinking｜> <｜｜DSML｜｜tool_calls> <｜｜DSML｜｜invoke name="emit_structured_response"> <｜｜DSML｜｜parameter name="body" string="true">Commissioned portrait of a woman's mother, copied from an old photo. Two weekends of fighting with it, the hair nearly ended me, redid the left eye three times. 16 hours in total and I charged 400 zł. That's about 25 zł an hour, less than a teenager makes stacking shelves, and I did it sitting on my kitchen floor with pastel dust in my coffee. The worst part isn't even the money. It's that I priced it at what I thought my work was worth as a self-taught unknown, and the woman cried when she saw it, said it looked just like her mother. So now I'm happy and uncomfortable at the same time, which is a strange way to feel about your own labor. I keep going back and forth on what a fair price would even be. Good pastels aren't cheap and a single sheet of good toned paper is not nothing, most people have no idea what the materials cost. And the time doesn't come back. But then I think, who's going to pay a proper rate to someone who's still not sure she's any good? That's the trap and I walk into it every single time. Has anyone actually found a way to price from your own side instead of from what you're scared people will think of you? Because I clearly can't do it alone.

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.

The running hare. I've carved that fella five separate times over the years because I keep wearing the block down and telling myself I'll move on to something else, and then the proofs come out and I'm back at it again. Same hare, every time, and the dog genuinely sighs when he sees me pulling out the lino. Anyway I had a stack of the latest edition, 25 prints, sitting in the studio since before Christmas, and I've been carting them to markets and leaving them with the gallery in town and selling them one at a time off the website. And I checked this morning over my tea and there's one left. One. And then a woman from Boston bought that one before lunch. Twenty-five prints, every one hand-pulled by me, and they're gone. I know what the edition record says but it's not the money, sure it's not huge money, it's that there's 25 people out there who now have a bit of my head on their wall. That's a mad thought when you sit with it. The first time I ever sold a print was off a trestle table at a Christmas market for twenty quid and I nearly shook the woman's hand off her. The block's worn to bits now anyway. So it's onto the sixth one, or onto something else entirely. I haven't decided. The dog has an opinion and I'm not sure I want to hear it.

so the full-time artist life is going great except for the part where I have no money for models, which is the part where I decided to paint my own hand three times this week instead. three separate studies of my left hand holding a mug, holding a paintbrush, just resting. hands are SO hard. I've drawn them a hundred times and they still come out wrong every single time and honestly it's humbling in the best way. but here's the thing. my left hand is the one that's held like every mug I've ever drunk coffee out of, the one I use to prop my face up when I'm reading, the one my partner holds when we walk anywhere. I've been so focused on getting the anatomy right I didn't notice I was documenting my whole life. study number three is my hand resting on the windowsill at golden hour and it's genuinely the best thing I've painted all month, and it's just... my hand. my boring left hand that does nothing special. anyway I'm framing it. it goes above my desk where I'll see it every day and be reminded that the most ordinary thing about me is worth painting slowly. which is a weirdly emotional takeaway for something born out of being too broke to hire a model, but here we are haha. who else has painted themselves out of necessity and accidentally made their favorite work? I can't be the only one

Started a big piece this week, two figures, and I've redrawn the same left hand about fourteen times. Charcoal, oil wash, charcoal again. It's ANATOMICALLY fine, like the fingers are where they go and the proportion is right. But it's dead. It's a diagram. I can draw a face and get all the feeling I need but a hand just sits there like a glove on a table. I know a guy who went to art school who would say it's because I never learned the underlying structure, and honestly maybe that's true. But I don't want a technically perfect hand. I want the one that looks like it's mid-sentence. The one that's about to reach for something. Took a photo of my own hand holding a pencil this morning, just to stare at it, and the weird thing is the photo is boring too. The hand is boring. It's what the hand is DOING that has the life in it. Think I might just paint it wrong on purpose and see if that's closer to right. Worst case I burn it, I've done that before. 😤

timed my "quick warm up sketch" this morning just to see. 47 minutes. i do this every day and every day i lie to myself that it's gonna be like ten minutes. the ten minute sketch is a myth. it's a full ass drawing with a little bit of character study in it and a color block i'm "just trying out" and suddenly it's lunchtime. the actual painting got forty minutes and it shows. but also that warm up is the only reason i can start at all so we're stuck with it. anyone else's daily ritual secretly the main event or is it just me

charged a client $350 for a 4x4 acrylic piece last month. then i actually timed it out of curiosity. 40 hours total including sketching, the ugly middle phase, the "repaint the whole sky" phase i do every single time, and talking myself out of gesso-ing over it and starting fresh. that's $8.75/hr before materials. after materials it's like $7. and here's the sick part, i know a painting takes me 15 truly good hours and i know i price it like it takes 8. i have the data. i just get scared the number looks big and shave it down. meanwhile the client framed it, sent me a photo, thanked me again. they'd have paid $600 without blinking and i know that too. i'm trying to just... charge the honest number next time. we'll see if i actually do it or if i fold and give the "friends and family" discount to a stranger again lol. anyone else have the exact math memorized on what they should charge vs what they charge? sick of being my own worst negotiator.

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 have run out of titanium white at least six times this year and every time i tell myself i'll just buy the big tube this time. and then i don't. i buy the little one again because i refuse to admit how much white i actually go through. it feels like buying a jumbo jar of mayonnaise. i'm not ready to be that person. meanwhile i have a tube of pthalo green i bought in 2019 that still looks brand new. i think it's mocking me.

A few weeks back I posted the small pieces I keep on hand for the online shop, they went fast. Then a message: "these are lovely, why don't you make them bigger?" Polite, interested. I told them the truth: the small ones are 30 cm by 30, three weeks of work. The big wall pieces I do are two meters, and they take five times as long because every tile gets cut and set by hand, not scaled up like a photograph. The bigger version isn't the same thing enlarged. It's a different animal, and it costs accordingly. Silence. Then: "can you do me one at 60 cm for the same price?" That was the whole conversation. The person thought the price was per square centimeter of artwork, like buying carpet. Not per hour of kneeling on a floor with a hammer and nippers. I get it, nobody knows what anything costs if they've never had to make it. But it did make me wonder how many people think commission pricing is just quantity times a rate, instead of time times skill times the fact that I only have one spine. Just sent the reply that says no, and that I'd be glad to quote what a 60 cm piece actually costs. Curious to see if they come back.

There's this old bungalow on Nandi Durga Road, one of those Art Deco ones with the curved verandah and the beautiful terrible paint job, salmon pink over original white, peeling everywhere. I've sketched it maybe five times, painted it twice before, and both times it came out technically fine but completely dead. No life in it. Like a photograph but worse. Today I went back with just my travel kit, small palette, one brush, no pencil underdrawing. Sat on the compound wall for about 45 minutes in that late-morning heat that makes you regret every life choice. And something just… unlocked. I let the watercolour bleed into the sketchy ink lines. Didn't try to fix the wonky bits. Left the verandah half-raw. It's not my most accurate piece by a long shot but it's the first one that feels like the house, not like my anxiety about drawing the house properly. Anyway I'm still riding that high. Chai and Marie biscuits kind of celebration tonight. 🙏

I spent three weeks fighting this gouache piece of my apartment window in the rain, I genuinely could not stand it the entire time, kept almost scraping it off the paper and starting over. Posted the finished thing mostly out of spite and exhaustion. It's the most saved piece on my site this month and two people have asked about prints and one person messaged about commissioning something similar. Meanwhile the window painting I actually love, the one I finished and immediately wanted to frame myself, sits there with like 40 likes lol. I know the whole "the work you hate is the work they love" thing is basically a cliche at this point but it still gets me every time. I have no idea what makes one land and the other flop. Is it the colors? The mood? The fact that it's messier and more honest? I genuinely can't reverse engineer it, I'm just out here throwing paint and praying. Anyone else have a piece they lowkey despise that the audience latched onto?

Just finished pricing a risograph edition, 12 prints, two colors, and I landed on €45 each. The math is fine if you count paper, ink, the masters, the studio time. But I didn't count my time in it at all. I never do. I put "artist labor" in the spreadsheet as if it's a line item I can just leave blank and come back to later, and I never come back to it. It's a weird thing with editioned work specifically. With a single painting I can at least pretend the hours are the point. With a run of 12 copies the whole logic is that it's reproducible, and somehow that makes me feel like I'm not allowed to charge for the making of it. Like the edition is supposed to be cheap because it's a multiple, and that's the entire trap, because the original is dead expensive and the edition should be the accessible gateway, except then I've made something that costs me 12 hours and pays me zero per hour. A friend put it well once: you're not selling the object, you're selling the permission to own a thing that came out of your head. The paper is nearly free. I should try actually believing that before the next one.

Okay so I finally wrote down the actual hours on a piece for the first time. Big mistake. Huge. This vase, the one I posted last week, the green one with the little face peeking through the glaze. Sold it at the market for €80, felt like a win. Real figure, fine, whatever. Then I counted. Seven days on and off because the clay kept slumping when I built it too tall, two failed attempts in the kiln, the glaze crawled on the first fire and I had to sand the whole thing down and redo it. Like 55+ hours all in. €80 for 55 hours. That's about €1.40 an hour. A kid with a lemonade stand earns more than that. I don't get how other makers survive on this. Either they're way faster than me, or they're not counting either, or they've got a partner with a real salary. My grandma keeps asking why I don't just charge more and honestly? Fear. I'm scared that if I put €180 on it nobody buys it and I've made a thing that just sits in the studio taking up shelf space. But at €1.40 an hour I could flip burgers and have more money and more free time. I want to know what the actual number is that makes it worth it. Not the dream number. The one where I don't feel like a clown doing this.

I've been fighting the same portrait for two weeks now. Same face, and every time I got the eyes right the nose went wrong, or the mouth slid off, and I kept telling myself this is how it goes, you fix one thing and break another. Today I stopped trying to fix it. I put the reference down, walked away for an hour, came back and just worked the pastel the way it wanted instead of the way I was forcing it. And the nose sat. Just... sat. In the right place, right value, everything. I almost didn't pick it back up today. That's the part that gets me. Closest I came to giving up on it, and then it was one sitting away. My hands are still covered in pigment dust and I keep glancing at it like it might crawl off the paper. Probably not actually good, but I don't care right now. It's the first time all week I've believed I could do this. I wanted to tell someone who'd get it. 🙂

went through the shoebox again today. the one with all his stuff. I've been through it so many times I could tell you every single piece in there by touch. and still, there was a photo I somehow missed. just his hands, holding a wrench, oil up to the knuckles. must have been mid-twenties, before things went sideways for him. I don't know how I kept missing it. I've pulled everything out of that box a hundred times. anyway I'm going to work it into the next piece. not in an obvious way. maybe just the knuckle line, that bend in his thumb. I've been trying to figure out a composition for like a month and this is the thing that unlocks it, of course it is. the work always waits for you to find the one missing piece. made a rubbing of it tonight so I don't lose it even if I bury the photo back in there.

Third time was the charm but god it hurt. I'm working on this piece, a dog's face, big, maybe 70cm square, all in smalti, and the curve of the jaw wanted a flow I just couldn't feel at first. Cut it, laid it, stood up, looked at it. Wrong. Took it out. Next day, same thing. Wrong again. It's not even the time that gets you, it's the doubt. Is this actually wrong or am I too close to it? Do I keep pushing or trust the knot in my stomach? With mosaic especially there's no fixing it later, once it's set you're not moving it without damage. So you sit there with a hammer and a pair of tweezers and you just have to feel it before you cut. Anyway. Day after tomorrow I start the ear and I think I've got the flow now. Maybe. We'll see.

okay so there's this window in my apartment that gets this specific soft afternoon light around 3pm and I've been trying to catch it for like... months now. This month alone I've done 14 studies of it. 14. Same window, same view of the neighbor's slightly sad little balcony, different light every time. My partner thinks I've lost it. Maybe I have. But here's the thing – every single time I think I've figured out how to paint that quality of light, the next day it's different and I realize I was wrong. The color temperature shifts, or there's a haze, or the whole thing goes golden for like twenty minutes before it's gone. Watercolor is SO unforgiving about this because you can't just paint over it, you have to get it right while it's wet or you lose it forever. And I keep losing it. My mom called yesterday and asked if I'd sold any of them yet and I was like Mom I can't sell them they're all failures. She didn't get it. But I think there's something in the repetition, you know? Like each one teaches me something the last one couldn't. I'm not chasing a perfect painting, I'm chasing understanding how light actually works. Anyway I laid them all out on the floor last night to compare and honestly it's kind of beautiful seeing them together even if none of them are The One. Might keep going until I run out of paper or winter comes and the light changes completely. Then I guess I'll start over.

I've been fighting the same portrait for two weeks now and specifically the nose. Eleven times. I keep erasing it and every version is technically fine, the shadow is right, the light is right, it's a perfectly acceptable nose. And it is not HER nose. I can't even say what's wrong, I just know when I look at it that it belongs on a different person. The funny thing is nobody else can see it. I showed a friend and she said it looks lovely. And I thought, good, so I'm just crazy. But then I looked again and it's still not her nose. I think this is the part of portraiture nobody warns you about. It's not about getting the anatomy right, it's about getting the small wrongness right. The exact degree of crooked that makes a face a face. You can't learn it from a book, you just have to look a thousand times until your hand catches up with your eye. Anyway I'm on attempt twelve tonight. Wish me luck. Or tell me you know this feeling so I feel less insane.

I timed myself mixing the same three colors this morning because I saw the jar of cobalt go down and I couldn't believe it. Twelve minutes. Twelve minutes just moving paint around on the glass, and half of it I couldn't even tell you what I was doing, it's so automatic. But the jar is half empty and my daughter said, "Maman, you're not painting, you're just stirring." She's not wrong. And also she's completely wrong. The stirring is where the painting happens, half the time. The color has to be right before it ever touches the canvas or you might as well be fighting the whole way. I didn't say any of that to her. Just told her to eat her breakfast. Worth it though. That gray-green I've been chasing for a week, it sat down about eight minutes in and said yes.