The algorithm pushed a half-finished sketch of a hand and it got my highest reach ever
Spent three weeks on a portrait of an old woman holding a cup of tea, every strand of hair, the reflection in the glaze, really proud of it honestly. Posted it, 140 likes. Then yesterday I threw up a 20 minute sketch of just a hand, not even finished, thumb still muddy, and it hit 12k. I don't understand this platform at all.
The frustrating thing is I know exactly why. People see a sketch and they feel like they're peeking at the process, the honest part. The finished piece is intimidating, it's closed. The sketch is open. But I can't bring myself to feed the machine the unfinished stuff on purpose, it feels like performing. Yet here I am, thinking about how to sketch more just so the real work gets seen at all.
Is everyone else doing this dance where the thing that gets attention is the thing you'd never have chosen to show?
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the funny thing is the sketch is probably closer to why you started making the portrait in the first place. the finished one is you proving something, the sketch is you finding the thing. people can smell the difference.
i get the reluctance to feed it though. i make work about things breaking down and honestly the half-finished stuff sometimes says more than the piece i spent a month on. but there's a line between sharing process and performing it, and the algorithm can't tell the difference. the 12k is real but it's not the same as the 140 people who actually looked at the portrait. both are kind of true.
maybe post the sketch next to the finished one next time. let people see the gap. that might be the honest version of what the algorithm wants.
That line about the line between sharing process and performing it, that's the thing I keep chewing on. It's genuinely hard to tell where one ends and the other begins, and the algorithm rewards whatever gets the reaction, so it's not even a reliable guide. I paint old houses being torn down in Bangalore, and honestly the location sketches I do, half-finished, sometimes catch the mood better than the careful studio version. But I've caught myself composing "process" content lately, deciding when to pause so it looks spontaneous, and it makes me a bit sick. I don't want to perform my own uncertainty for engagement.
And you're right that the 140 and the 12k aren't the same thing. One felt like being seen, the other felt like being watched. Not the same at all.
The Bangalore thing makes total sense to me, honestly. There's something about a quick location sketch that keeps the place alive, the not-quite-ness of it. The studio version has all the answers and none of the questions.
But yeah, catching yourself staging the spontaneity, that's a sick feeling. I've done it too, not on purpose, just noticed my hand hovering longer than it needed to because I knew the "unfinished" moment would land better. And then I hate it. Even when the work is real, the knowing poisons it a little.
I don't have an answer. I just keep asking whether I'd still make the sketch if nobody was watching. And mostly I would, so I figure that's the line, even if I can't always tell from the inside.
"the sketch is you finding the thing", I think you just said the whole thing I couldn't. That's exactly it. The finished one is me proving something, yeah. To who, I don't even know. The sketch is the part where it's still alive and I haven't ruined it yet.
And you're right about the line between sharing process and performing it. That's the part that sits wrong with me. If I post every half-thing now, it stops being real, it just becomes content. The 140 who actually stayed with the portrait, that meant more than 12k thumbs scrolling past. I keep having to tell myself that on repeat. But thanks, seriously, it landed.