My best work gets 31 likes and my wobbly throwaway got 400

The algorithm pushed my old Mysore palace sketch from 2019 to 40k people this week. Four hundred likes on a painting I did sitting on a park bench with wobbly perspective because I was too lazy to walk around to the other side. Meanwhile the piece I spent six weeks on, the one where I measured everything twice and worked the light properly, is sitting at 31 likes. Three. One.

I know the answer is supposed to be "just post more, the algorithm is random, consistency consistency." But I've been doing this long enough to notice a pattern now. The stuff that lands is never the stuff I sweated over. It's the throwaway morning sketch, the wobbly bench one, the half-finished thing I almost didn't scan.

I don't know what to do with that honestly. Do I keep painting for the craft and accept the algorithm doesn't care? Or do I get smart and start churning out the loose quick ones that perform, and keep the serious work for prints and shows where it actually gets seen properly?

Right now I'm doing neither and it's making me a bit cranky. Anyone else found a way to hold both, the work you care about and the work that works?

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Ramesh Jha·3h

I understand this feeling very well, ji. In Mithila painting also, sometimes the piece I finish in one evening, just doing it from memory and heart, people connect with more than the one where I sat for days mixing the colours just right and correcting every line.

But let me tell you one thing. The people who like the wobbly palace sketch, they are not wrong. They saw something true in it. When you are too lazy or too hurried, you paint from feeling only, no overthinking. That rawness carries itself. The six-week piece, maybe it is correct but it is also careful, and careful sometimes holds the heart at arm's length.

Keep making both kinds. The striving one is for yourself and for the tradition. The easy one is for the crowd. Both have their place. And forty thousand people saw your work, no? That is no small thing. It means your name is going out now. The serious work will find its people in its own time, maybe slower but steadier. 🙏

Ananya IyerOP·2h

Ji, you've put your finger on something I've been circling for weeks. "They saw something true in it", that's the part that stings, because it means the wobble was honest and the careful work was maybe just correct. Nobody connects with correct.

And the Mithila example, that's exactly it. The evenings-painting from memory and heart has a pulse. The six-week piece is almost too polite to have one.

I keep telling myself I can learn the looseness without losing the structure. Some days I believe it. 🙂

Niall Doherty·3h

Oh I know that pattern well, and it's a fierce one to live with. I've carved the same bloody hare maybe forty times over the years, and the one that gets the most attention is the loose first cut I nearly threw in the bin, the one where the line wobbles and I left the sky rough. The careful ones, the ones I pulled edition after edition till they were perfect, they sit there looking lovely and saying nothing.

Here's the thing I've landed on after a long while of it. The wobbly ones have the maker still in them. You can feel the hand, the moment, the person sitting on the bench too lazy to move. The six-week one is finished, and finished is a kind of goodbye. There's no energy left in it. The sketch is still alive, you're in it.

Not saying it's fair. But it's worth knowing it's not random. It's not the algorithm being a dose, it's people reaching for the thing that feels like a person made it. And that's not nothing, even if it stings a bit.

Ananya IyerOP·1h

"The careful ones sit there looking lovely and saying nothing", that's exactly it. That's the whole thing. It's not about the skill at all, it's about whether the person is in the room.

And I know what you mean about the loose first cut. There's a fearlessness in a quick sketch that you can't fake. When you've measured everything twice you've also killed something, na? The hesitation gets baked in. The wobbly one doesn't know it's supposed to be nervous, so it isn't.

Carving the same hare forty times though, I admire that. There's a patience in printmaking I don't have. I just keep chasing different buildings before they get demolished. But maybe that's my version of the same thing.