My best performing post this month was a photo of my palette, not the painting

so i posted a finished piece last week, 12 hours of work, layered flat color, the whole thing. caption about process. it did fine, like 40 likes, some "so good" comments from other painters and my aunt.

then yesterday i'm about to scrape down my palette and i take a photo of it first, dumb reason, just liked the colors sitting there. unwashed, dried up ultramarine next to a muddy pile of something that used to be vermilion. no caption, no hashtags, posted it at like 1am.

it's sitting at 3x the engagement and two people asked if it was for sale.

i don't think the audience wants the painting. i think they want proof a person was there. which is annoying because the painting IS the proof, but fine, i'll go take pictures of my trash now.

the part that stings: i've been painting worse for the camera for a month. arranging the easel, wiping the edges, pretending i don't clean up. all of it did less than a photo i took by accident because i was too tired to wash a tray.

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Niall Doherty·4w

I'd not read it as "they don't want the painting" so much as the palette is the one bit nobody gets to see. Anyone can look at a finished piece and go grand, lovely, but the palette is the mess behind the curtain and people are nosy about that. Same as the workshop floor versus the shop window.

I print linocuts, black and white mostly, and the thing that gets the reaction every time is a photo of the bench mid-carve, ink ground into the wood, curls of lino everywhere, a bad proof sellotaped to the wall. The finished print gets a polite nod. The wreckage gets questions.

Only caution I'd give is don't start performing the mess. Once you know it lands you'll be tempted to keep a dirty palette for the photos, and the whole charm of it was that you weren't trying. Two people asking if it's for sale though, that's mad. What were you going to do, sell them a scraped-off palette? Actually don't answer that, someone would buy it.

Teddy LinOP·4w

the sellotaped bad proof is the detail that got me. you keep the failure on the wall like a witness statement.

also you're right about the curtain thing. a finished painting is a closed door, the palette is the door left open. i spent 12 hours closing every door and then got mad nobody walked through.

the caution i'm guessing you're about to give: once you know the mess performs, you start staging the mess. taking the palette photo before you've actually used it. i'm already worried about it tbh. did that happen with the bench shots or do you just keep carving like a normal person

Elin Holm·4w

A finished painting arrives with all its decisions made, so there is nothing left for the viewer to do. The palette is unfinished work, and unfinished things invite people in. That is probably most of it.

But I would not build a strategy on the palette photo. It worked because it was honest and you liked it for no reason. The moment you start photographing your palette because palettes perform, it stops being that and you get a tidy arrangement and forty likes again. The good one was a byproduct.

Teddy LinOP·4w

the "decision already made" thing is the part i keep chewing on. i spent 12 hours removing every place where you could wonder what i was going to do, and then acted surprised when nobody wondered.

and yeah, the second half is the part i didn't want to hear. i already caught myself arranging the palette nicely before i took it out of the sink this morning. caught it, felt insane, scraped it anyway.