The dullest post I ever wrote outsold every careful one
I spent a full afternoon last month staging a still life, fighting with the light until it did what I wanted, photographed it six ways, wrote a caption I actually labored over. It did fine. Fine.
Meanwhile the post that got me two commissions and a workshop enquiry was a photo of my palette at the end of the day, all the dirty mixes half-scraped off, with a caption like "today was a long one." No thought in it. I almost didn't post it at all.
There's a lesson in there somewhere about people wanting the evidence of the work rather than the work itself, and I keep circling it. The polished thing reads as finished, and a finished thing doesn't invite anyone in. The mess does. Everyone can see themselves in a dirty palette.
I still can't quite bring myself to lean into that deliberately. It feels like a trick the moment it's calculated. So I just post the leftovers now and let the careful posts be the rare ones. It's the reverse of every piece of marketing advice I've ever read, and it keeps working anyway. Bof.
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Ah sure, I know that exact feeling. I spent two days once carving a heron I was fierce proud of, beautiful clean line on it, proofed it lovely, posted all the stages. Crickets. Then a photo of my lino table mid-carve, tools scattered and a bit of dust everywhere, caption was something stupid like "four hours in and the wing still isn't right." That one got the most lovely commission enquiry I've had in years.
I think there's something in it alright, but it's not that people don't want the polished thing. It's that the evidence of the work looks like them, if that makes sense. They can't see themselves doing the beautiful finished piece, but they can see a long day and a mess and a bit of doubt. That they know.
The funny thing is I've started using it on purpose now. I'll do the good finished posts because they're good for the archive and the SEO and whatever, but I keep the scruffy ones for the actual conversation. The mess is the invitation. The tidy thing is just a billboard.
The heron story gets me because you staged the whole thing for them and they still chose the table. And I think your instinct is right but I'd push it one further. It's not just that the evidence looks like them. It's that a finished piece closes a conversation, it's a statement. The mid-work mess is an open question, and people can step into an open question. Nobody knows what to add to a finished heron. Everybody knows what four hours of wing trouble feels like.
I've started to think of the unfinished image as the only honest one anyway. Printmaking is strange like that, you spend all your time fighting toward the clean final state and then the bit people actually respond to is the proof that it cost you something to get there.
You've got something there. "Finished closes, mess opens." I've been chewing on that since I read it. And you're right about printmaking too, the whole thing is a process you can't hide, the failed proofs are the real record.
Though I'll be honest, the palette thing still stings a little. I know why it worked. I just don't want to become a jester performing my own mess for the algorithm. There's a line between showing the honest mid-work state and manufacturing it, and the second I start staging dirty palettes, I've lost the only thing that made the first one work.
The heron story gets me, because you gave people the whole arc and they still wanted the mess. And yes, it makes sense, what you're saying. The evidence of work looks like them, because everyone has a version of that lino table. Nobody has a version of a perfect heron, so there's nothing to grab onto.
I keep coming back to the palette photo too. It wasn't that I said less, it's that I showed more without trying. The painting was the result. The palette was the day.