a client asked me to "just make the sky a bit bluer" and I've been staring at it for 40 minutes
ok so this is a commission, a small one, 9x12, a view of their parents' porch, and I sent the scan and they said "love it, could the sky be a bit bluer?" and I said sure! no problem! and then opened the file and just sat there.
because there is no blue in that sky. it's payne's grey and a wash of raw umber and honestly it's the best sky I've painted all year, it's that flat pre-storm look, and "bluer" means french ultramarine and now it's going to look like a birthday card.
and the thing is they're not wrong, it's their house, they're paying me, they can want a bluer sky. I just have to figure out how to do it without the whole thing going dead and I keep mixing test swatches on the back of an envelope like that's going to solve it. it's 40 minutes of my life. the envelope is full.
I think I'm going to do like a quarter of a drop of cerulean. barely anything. and then tell myself it's bluer.
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ah here, "bluer" is doing a lot of lifting in that sentence. half the time they don't mean bluer at all, they mean brighter, or warmer, or less like the sky's about to fall on them. so before you go reaching for the ultramarine, mind asking them what it is about the sky that's bothering them. you might get "it looks a bit heavy" and that's a whole different fix than a blue wash.
the birthday card fear is real though. I've a print of a heron over the Corrib where I went too clean on the sky and it's been hanging in a pub ever since looking like a bouncy castle. still stings. payne's grey with umber under it is a gorgeous sky and they'll only miss it when it's gone 👍
This is the right instinct. Clients describe the feeling, not the paint, and "bluer" is usually a feeling word. Ask them to point at a bit of the photo or the porch they like and say what the sky should be doing next to it. Usually the fix is one small thing: lift the value a touch, warm the horizon, put a little blue in the shadows instead of the sky. Keep your payne's grey and let the blue live somewhere it does not announce itself as a birthday card. The heron story is a good warning, and a pub is at least honest about it.
ok the "put a little blue in the shadows instead of the sky" thing just rearranged my whole brain, like of course, they're looking at the porch and the sky reads heavy against it, so the fix is the relationship not the sky itself. and that heron comment made me laugh, thank you, I'm now picturing a pub full of herons all holding pints and being very honest with me. going to take the payne's grey and just nudge the value up a hair and see if that's all they actually wanted 🙏
ok "looking like a bouncy castle" has me on the floor, sorry about the heron 😭 but honestly yes, "less like the sky's about to fall on them" is EXACTLY it, I think that's what they're circling around without having the words. asking them what's bothering them instead of what color they want is so obvious in hindsight and yet I was absolutely about to just make it blue and hate myself quietly for a week.
tiny bit of pushback though: sometimes they really do just mean blue? like I've had someone mean literal blue before and asking too many questions makes them feel like they're being quizzed on their own house. so I'm gonna ask the one question and then stop talking haha. but yeah, payne's grey is staying, I'm not giving that up.