A client told me my character's eyes looked like 'wet olives'

I was finishing a portrait commission last month, and the client sent back a note saying the eyes I'd painted looked 'like sad, wet olives.' I'd spent hours on the iris texture, but they were right, the color was totally off. I scrapped that layer and just sampled a color from a photo of my own eye instead. Now I always check eye colors against a real reference photo before calling anything done. Has a weird bit of feedback ever made you completely redo a part of your art?

3 comments

3 Comments

anthonygarcia2mo ago

My sunset looked like a melted crayon once.

tessa_kim318d ago

Wait, have you ever tried just letting the camera overexpose a little on purpose? @anthonygarcia, your melted crayon description actually reminds me of this trick I stumbled into. I was shooting a sunset a while back and the colors were looking all muddy and sad. So I bumped up the exposure compensation just a notch, like +0.7 or something. It blew out the highlights a bit but the rest of the colors got way more saturated and blended together like actual paint. Made the whole thing look way more dreamy and less like muddy water. Not saying it works for every shot but it might get you closer to that melted crayon vibe you want.

charles3262mo ago

Wet olives" is so specific, my friend had a client call their sunset "dirty ketchup.