Search

Made a vase that came out of the kiln looking like a sad potato with a neck. Warped, blistered, whole thing leaning like it had been drinking. I was so annoyed I filmed it for like 4 seconds just to vent to my group chat, posted it onto tiktok as a joke, didn't even edit it. That thing has 200k views and I sold three pieces because of it. Meanwhile the pieces I spent actual weeks on, perfect glaze, beautiful lighting, those get me maybe 40 likes each. I don't know what to do with this information. Do I just... make more sad potatoes on purpose? That feels like cheating. But also rent is due and the sad potato paid it.

three 24x36 acrylics for a small restaurant, $350 total, which is already embarrassing when i think about it. they loved them. framed them nice, hung them where people actually see them. then the owner asked if i'd paint a mural on the patio wall "in exchange for the visibility" and i caught myself going "yeah sure" in my head before my body caught up. visibility doesn't pay my rent, karen. it pays in likes from people who will also want a discount. did the math on the original three after the fact: about 14 hours each including sketches and the two repaints because they wanted the napkins color-matched to the wall. so $8.33 an hour. an hour. i could have just worked at the restaurant and the paintings would've been free. i said yes to the mural anyway. negotiating $200 and the owner looked hurt, like i'd asked them to donate a kidney. why is it always the people with the least money who are most offended when you ask to be paid for your time. i don't know if this is a pricing vent or a confession but it's both. next time i'm charging hourly upfront and i will simply endure the awkward silence.

I spent years putting only the final work online. Perfect lighting, good photo, the painting resolved. Crickets, mostly. A few likes from other painters. A few months ago I was frustrated with a figure painting, the hand was wrong for the fourth time, the whole thing looked a mess, and I took a photo of it on the easel with my palette旁边, just to vent to a painter friend. I put it on Instagram almost without thinking. That post got more comments than anything I'd put up in six months. People like to see the struggle. They like to see that you also don't know what you're doing for a while. I think for a long time I thought showing process would somehow diminish the finished work, like revealing the trick. But most people aren't painters. They have no idea what goes into it, and watching something get ugly and then get pulled back out of the ugly, that's the part they actually want to see. I'm still not comfortable with it. I was trained to show only the resolved thing. But I can't argue with the numbers, and more to the point I can't argue with the fact that the conversations are better. People ask real questions instead of just saying "beautiful." Wondering if anyone else has found that the unfinished, uncertain thing gets more traction than the polished final version.

okay so this is a bit of a vent but also I genuinely want to know who else has been here. I had a gallery take my work last year, was so excited, and then... the show happened and I basically heard nothing from them after. no photos, no follow-up, no "hey we sold this one" until I asked weeks later. and I remember sitting there thinking wait, am I crazy? is this just how it goes? because you hear all the horror stories about bad galleries but nobody talks about the ones that are just... fine. like not malicious, not scamming you, just completely indifferent. and somehow that's almost worse?? at least a red flag gives you a reason to leave. what's the closest you've come to walking away from a gallery that was technically fine but made you feel like a pain in the ass for existing? did you stay? did you go? tell me I'm not the only one who stayed way longer than I should've because I didn't want to seem difficult 😭

My old Makita 4.5 inch finally seized up this morning. Smoke out of the vents, bearings shot. I've had that thing since 1998. Twenty-six years of abuse, welded it back together twice myself, and it outlived two cheap replacements I bought "as backups." Went to order a new one and found myself staring at the same model, still in the lineup, sixty bucks. I closed the tab. Not sure why. I can afford it. But there's something about buying a clone of the exact tool that just died for you. Feels like I'm pretending the old one never happened. Like I'm supposed to just slot a new one in and pretend nothing changed. I'll probably cave by Friday when I need to cut steel and the hand grinder I've got left is a corded piece of junk that vibrates your wrists numb. But for now I'm just letting it sit. Anyone else ever got weird about retiring a tool that's still in production? Or is this just the sentiment of a man who's spent too many hours in a dusty room.