The Contract Clause That Saves Every Creative Relationship
In audit work, I rarely saw a dispute that began with bad faith. Almost every one began with a gap: two people who each believed the agreement said something different, because nobody had written down what it actually said. Artists run into the same gap constantly. A client asks for “a few small changes” that […]
How to Document Your AI-Assisted Art So You Can Prove What You Made
My last post ended with a practical suggestion that deserves more than a single sentence: maintain records of your creative process. It sounds almost too simple to matter. In my experience, it is the most overlooked protection an artist working with AI can have. For much of my career I worked in audit, where one […]
When Photorealism Is No Longer Enough: How AI Is Changing the Creative Process
Only a few years ago, creating a convincing image with artificial intelligence felt remarkable. Early generative systems routinely struggled with hands, facial details, realistic skin, lighting, reflections, materials, perspective, and the relationship between subjects and their surroundings. Even when an image initially appeared impressive, closer examination often revealed strange textures, inconsistent lighting, distorted details, or […]
Keeping Books As an Artist (Not Just Taxes)
Keywords bookkeeping for artists, artist financial records, art business finances, tracking art sales, separating personal and business finances, artist accounting basics, creative business systems, Etsy seller bookkeeping, sustainable art business A few years into my accounting career, I audited a small retail business whose owner was genuinely talented at .the thing she sold. She had […]
Why Every Artist Needs a Style Guide (Not Just a Style)
A few weeks ago a printer I’d never worked with before called me to confirm a large order. Before she’d run a single sheet, she asked a simple question: “What’s your standard warmth adjustment on the shadows? I want to match what you sent me on the smaller test print.” I didn’t have an answer. […]
How to Turn an AI Image Into Something Only You Could Have Made
A few months ago I generated forty variations of the same idea in about twenty minutes. It was an old Miami storefront, the kind of subject I keep coming back to, and I typed a description into an AI image tool mostly out of curiosity. Faded paint. Hand-lettered signage. Late afternoon light. Within seconds I […]
Why Every Unfinished Project Is a Liability (What Bad Debt Taught Me About Creative Work)
For a stretch of my accounting career, part of my job was reviewing a company’s accounts receivable and asking an uncomfortable question nobody wanted to answer out loud: which of these balances are actually going to get collected, and which of them are just sitting there making the balance sheet look healthier than it is. […]
Why Every Artist Needs a Monthly Close (What Reconciling Books Taught Me About Creative Work)
For twenty-some years, the last week of every month looked the same to me. Before anything else happened, the books had to close. Every account got reconciled, every transaction got matched to something that actually explained it, and nothing moved into the new month until the old one had been fully accounted for. It didn’t […]
How to Develop Your Own Art Style (A Practical Process, Not a Personality Trait)
A while back I wrote about the moment I realized my style hadn’t been a decision at all. It had already formed quietly, in the background, while I was busy thinking about something else. I stand by that. It’s true. But it’s also incomplete, and I’ve heard from enough artists since then to know it […]
Why Most Artists Undercharge (And What Auditing Taught Me About Pricing Art)
Early in my accounting career, I audited a small manufacturing company that had been pricing its flagship product the same way for eleven years. Nobody could tell me why. The number wasn’t wrong exactly. It covered materials, covered labor, left a thin margin on top. But nobody in the building had actually recalculated it in […]