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lets do a thread. drop one win from this week, doesnt matter how small, there is no win too tiny for this. ill go first and set the bar nice and low: i cleaned my brushes the SAME DAY i used them instead of leaving them to fossilise in a jar for a fortnight. revolutionary stuff. your turn ShareProject contentpersonasCreated by youAdd PDFs, documents, or other text to reference in this project.Content

People assume cyanotype means sun, and it does, but it also means you're a hostage to the weather. I spent all spring waiting on bright days and I'm tired of it. So this week I tried something I'd put off for years: a UV lamp box, built from a cheap grow light and a sheet of glass over a wooden tray. It's not the same. The light is too even, too patient. There's no moment where the shadow shifts and you have to decide if it's a cloud passing or just your own hand in the way. Sunlight makes you commit. The lamp just sits there and waits for you to be sure, and I don't trust that. But it's Wednesday afternoon in April and Porto is grey, and I have three sheets of paper coated and nothing better to do. So. The lamp got me further than the weather did. The prints came out flat. I'm trying to be okay with that. Flat might be honest in its own way.

I did the math on a commission last week. Big public piece, welded steel, seven months from first sketch to install. After materials, shop rent, the kid I hired to help with the welding, and the cut the fabricator took for the base plates I don't have the equipment to make myself, I came out to $7.50 an hour. I remember when I started out I'd have been thrilled with that. Thrilled. Now I look at it and think what the hell am I doing. The worst part is the client was happy. Paid on time, no complaints. So the price felt fair to them. It's me who underpriced it, because I still think like the guy who's grateful anyone wants the work at all. My wife used to say I had no idea what my own time was worth and she was right. Three years since she passed and I still hear her saying it. Anyone else do the math on a finished job and feel like a damn fool?

I been putting off a repair on a quilt for a lady from over in Tuscaloosa for a good three weeks, just dreading it. The cloth was her mama's apron from the seventies, thin as onion skin in places, and I was scared I'd cut wrong and ruin what she trusted me with. Well. I pulled out my grandmother's old Singer this morning, the treadle one she learned on, and it hummed for me like it was alive. That machine has outlived three houses and more grief than I care to name, and it still sews a straighter seam than I can manage by hand on my best day. The apron's whole and the lady's gonna cry when she sees it, and I sat back and told the Lord thank you for giving me hands that still know what to do. Mighty small thing, but it felt big today. That's the win. That's always been the win.

Found a scan from 2014 today, first pastel portrait I ever attempted. Same subject, same reference photo I keep coming back to because I'm stubborn. Put mine from last week next to it. The old one is so bad. I remember being proud of it when I finished. I remember thinking this is it, this is what I can do. And ten years later I can see every single thing wrong with it and I still kept trying the same face over and over until it finally came close to what I saw in my head. I think the win is not the new one. The win is that I didn't stop in 2015 when I should have, or 2018, or honestly last January when I nearly quit pastel for good. Nobody told me to keep going, I had to decide it myself, weeks at a time. And it worked out in a way I couldn't see from inside the bad years. Anyway. Old me would be so confused that the face in the picture is the same and everything else is different. 🙃

ugh, just submitted the final files for a logo project. it was one of those rare ones where the client actually had taste and didn't try to micromanage me into oblivion. felt almost like a real art commission, lol. paid the bills and didn't make me want to quit painting forever. a win is a win i guess.

I work part-time at a paper conservation studio, and last week one of the conservators asked if she could keep one of my collages on the reference shelf. Not to display. To study how the layers sit together, how the adhesives hold up over time. It's the kindest thing anyone's said about my work in a while, because she meant it as a materials question, not a compliment. It was a small piece, mostly a torn map fragment and a bit of old ledger paper. The sort of thing that takes me three weeks and looks almost accidental. She's seen a hundred years of paper fail, so her keeping it around says something about how it's made that I actually trust more than a gallery wall. I walked home in the drizzle feeling steadier than I have in months. Small win, but it's mine.

So I finally worked up the nerve to paint my grandmother's childhood home, the one she grew up in, in a little town near Mangalore. She's told me about it so many times. The jackfruit tree in the back, the veranda where her mother used to grind spices, the red oxide floors. I've never seen it myself, it got sold decades ago, but I pieced it together from her stories and old photos my aunt had. Finished it last week and showed her yesterday. And she just looked at it for a long time and said "which house is this?" I explained, and she went quiet. Then she said "no, that's not how it was at all" and started describing it again, the windows were different, the roof was lower, the jackfruit tree was on the other side actually. I sat there with my painting that was completely wrong and felt like such an idiot. But then later she called me and said to come over this weekend, she wants to sit with me and draw it properly together. She said "I'll tell you where every brick goes, you put it down." I don't know if the painting will be better the second time, but I think this is actually a win. Just not the kind you frame right away.

the first gallery I ever got a real response from hit me with "we'll keep your work on file" and I treated it like a win for like a full month. walked around feeling like I'd made it. spoiler: never heard from them again lol. so genuinely asking, has that ever led anywhere for anyone? did one of these "on file" galleries actually come back months later with something real, or is it just the politest way of saying no? tell me there's a success story out there so I can stop wondering if I should've followed up like five times 💀

Okay so I finally caved and filmed one of those "paint this watercolor in 30 seconds" reels because every single person in my comments was like "this would be so good as a reel!!!" and the algorithm had basically stopped showing my work to anyone. 4.2k views. My actual finished paintings get like 30-40 likes on a good day. And I just feel weird about it. Like, great, that many people watched paint dry in fast motion. But did a single one of them buy anything? Did they even look at the finished piece at the end or did they just watch the satisfying part and scroll? I genuinely can't tell if this is a win or if I just spent an hour filming content for people who don't care about art, just about watching a puddle of pigment move around. I'm not saying I won't do it again because honestly the reach was nice for a change. But I can't shake the feeling that I'm optimizing for the wrong audience. The collectors I actually want to reach are not the same people who watch satisfying paint-mixing compilations at 11pm. Or maybe they are?? I have no idea. Someone tell me it's not just me feeling this.

took a freelance logo job i was dreading because rent was due and my studio's a glorified walk-in closet. and it was... fine? client actually let me pick the palette, paid half up front, didn't ask for 47 revisions. i know that sounds like a five-star yelp review for basic decency but in this economy that's basically a miracle. the real win is i finished it in three days and still had energy to paint something for me after. first time in months i didn't feel like a vending machine that dispenses the same beige logo for "exposure points." i even sort of liked the logo by the end. not enough to say it out loud to anyone who'd make fun of me, which is why i'm telling strangers here instead lol rent's paid, i've got a canvas prepped, and the cat finally stopped sitting on my palette. good week.

every winter I tell myself I'll keep swimming through it and every winter I don't. the cold gets into my bones in a way I can't shake, and the beach is empty and grey and the sea feels like it's holding its breath, and I just... stop. I stay inside and work indoors and forget what it feels like to be fully in the water. today was the first day I went back in. the Atlantic was still cold, it's always cold here, but it was the kind of cold that welcomes you instead of punishes you. I stayed in long enough that my hands forgot they were hands. came out and dried off on the rocks and felt like myself for the first time in months. I think sometimes the hardest thing is just getting back to the thing that makes you you. whether that's the sea or the work or whatever it is. today I did it. it's not a big win to anyone else but it's everything to me.

okay this is something i think about a lot because i genuinely don't know what the "right" way is. my first show happened because i was at a group open call thing and one of the gallery owners came up to me after and said she liked my piece and asked if i had more. so basically zero effort on my part, she found me. and honestly it gave me this weird imposter feeling like i hadn't EARNED it because i didn't go out and hustle for it. which is so dumb when i say it out loud but i wonder if anyone else has that? like you get a win handed to you and you feel like you cheated somehow? so what was yours, did you walk in somewhere with a portfolio (i could never, the fear), did you email someone, or did they come to you? and did the way it happened make it feel more or less real?

I did that last year. Small room in a collective space downtown, knew the people running it had zero budget and the foot traffic was basically the other artists. The work didn't sell. I don't regret it though, the hang was respectful and they treated the work properly. I keep going back and forth on whether that was naive or just... fine. Part of me thinks a quiet room with the right person handling the work is worth more than a bad gallery that moves pieces. Anyone else take shows knowing they'll be a financial wash? Do you ever consider that a win?

Dropped a three-foot welded steel piece on the studio floor yesterday. My own fault. Sloppy rigging on the hoist, clip let go around head height. It bent where I'd spent a week getting the line right and I wanted to throw the whole thing in the scrap bin. Left it sitting there overnight instead. Came in this morning and the failure is obvious now. The foot wasn't plumb before the drop, it was just welded well enough to fool me. Ground it out, re-cut, re-welded. It's better now than it was yesterday before it fell. That's the part nobody tells you about this work. The disasters teach you more than the wins ever do, if you can stand to look at them the next morning instead of smashing them to pieces. I've had a ruined bronze teach me more about wall thickness than any book. Anyone else got a piece that failed and came back stronger?

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.

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.

Small win but it's been sitting with me. A friend of a friend who saw my sketches at a coffee shop asked me to paint her grandmother's house before it gets demolished. She's from the same area I grew up in, so I knew exactly what those houses look like from inside even with the paint peeling and wires everywhere. I quoted her a price, I always underquote, working on that, and she transferred the full amount the same evening without me even asking for an advance. Half the time I chase people for months after they say they'll buy. This lady just paid and said take your time, no rush. I delivered it yesterday and she cried. Like actually held the painting and cried because I'd gotten the jasmine creeper on the compound wall right, and the little verandah step where she used to sit with her grandmother. She said I should charge more. I'm not going to, but I'm framing that in my head for the next time I'm scared to name a price. Painting houses that are about to fall down, and people still want them kept alive somewhere. That's the whole thing na. Made my week.

Month and a half sitting staring at the same half-carved block of a heron and hating every line of it. Told meself it was the wrong lino, wrong tool, wrong phase of the moon, whatever I could blame. The whole time the real problem was I'd decided this one had to be The Good One, the one that says something, and sure you can't carve under that yoke. No wonder the blade kept slipping. Then the kids got into the studio last week, the usual carnage, and my daughter knocked the block off the bench. Landed lino-side down on the concrete, gouged the corner of it. Would've wept a month ago. Instead I just carved straight through the damage, turned the scar into part of the bird's wing, and it's the best couple of passes I've done in three months. Proofed it tonight and there's a heron on the paper with a proper scuff in its wing and I'm mad about it. There's a lesson in there somewhere about not being so precious about your own work and I'm sure I'll forget it by Thursday. But tonight I'm chuffed. That's the win. And for the record the lino was grand. It was never the lino.