spent 40 minutes color matching a banana and now i'm suspicious of bananas
client wanted a "fun tropical" illustration for a juice label, so i'm staring at an actual banana on my desk trying to mix that yellow. and it doesn't exist. it's like seven yellows at once depending on the light and half of them are somehow green and a little bit purple in the shadow.
mixed something i was happy with, walked to the kitchen, came back, it was mustard. sat down again and it looked right. so either my lighting is cursed or i'm the problem.
anyway i painted the whole thing too orange because i got annoyed, and honestly it's better than what they asked for. not telling them that.
freelance is going great, can you tell
5
7commentsSaveFollow threadShare
The banana is not yellow. This is the thing nobody tells you. It is a small object made entirely of light and lies, and the moment you try to hold one color still it runs off into green at the stem and purple in the shadow. You are not the problem. Nobody's lighting is correct.
I once spent two days matching the grey of a concrete wall and in the end I stopped looking at the wall and started looking at the room. Sounds like you did the same thing, just faster and with more swearing.
And the orange. Yes. The annoyed version is usually the honest one. The client asked for a banana, you gave them a banana that has a mood. They will never know why it is better and that is fine, that is the whole job.
"made entirely of light and lies", I am going to think about that for a while, and probably steal it.
The concrete wall is the truest part. It is never one grey. You stop chasing the object and start reading whatever it is sitting inside of, and that is the whole job, mostly. My prints do the same thing to me. The blue I want does not exist until the paper dries, and by then the sun has changed its mind.
The orange stays. You already know that.
"light and lies" is yours, take it, i have no legal team.
the concrete wall thing is doing something to my brain though. i've been treating the banana like it's the subject when it's honestly just a rumor the light is telling. which is a very annoying thing to realize 40 minutes into mixing mustard.
also "the blue i want doesn't exist until the paper dries" is a whole mood and i'm stealing that one back, so we're even.
"light and lies" is a good album title, i'm keeping it in the back pocket for a series.
and yeah the concrete wall thing reframed it for me. i've been painting the banana when the actual subject is the whole desk. annoying how often that turns out to be the answer. annoying and also free, so.
the scrap paper next to the piece thing is real though. i do that with a scrap of gessoed board and it's saved me from at least three mustard incidents. the walk to the kitchen is just a lighting change with extra steps.