I just finished this illustration for a friend, it’s some kind of lion woman, as the name suggests.

The character is actually a portrait of my friend’s daughter and it’s supposed to look pretty much like her, which thing scared me quite a bit.
A part from very carefully selected exceptions, I never, ever work for friends or family. This is something I learned after many painful experiences, and I’m pretty sure every freelance illustrator has a good deal of anecdotes to support my policy.
This is like RULE NUMBER ONE.

Once I made a wall painting for a friend of mine.
Sticking to any sort of composition ended up being an impossible task, as he kept on insisting on pointless, impossible details he wanted to add along the way.
“Can you draw a bunch of mossy stones there? A parrot would look nice on that tree. Can I have a waterfall? And now can you add a squirrel?
That was enough. “I already made two!”
“Oh? I can’t see them”
“They’re behind the tree! If you squint you can see the shadow of a tail”.
“Oh cool thanks”
I got away with the invisible squirrels, but that was when I came up with RULE NUMBER ONE.

Another time I was commissioned a portrait by my uncle’s second wife (ok, she’s technically my aunt, but I’d rather refer to her as my uncle’s second wife).
Anyway. She has what can only be defined as a massive nose. Or, if you want to put it some other way, her face is way smaller than it should be compared to her nose.
I tried to downplay it a bit because I know she has a problem with it, only to have her complain about how it was disproportionally big.
“Actually, uncle’s second wife, I made it.. oh forget it, I’ll make it smaller”.
I went through a large number of revisions before we agreed on a size she was happy with, only to find out that the face I painted was nothing like hers.
OH REALLY? THIS IS SOMEONE ELSE’S NOSE, UNCLE’S SECOND WIFE!

Which lead me to RULE NUMBER TWO: no portraits.
People tend not to be happy about their physical appearance, and you never know which wrinkle they would like to smooth and which other detail they would find offensive if drawn accurately.

So, this time I was asked to break BOTH RULES, at the same time.
However, my friend is a freelance herself, and I’m sure she knows the rules better than I do.
And her daughter is quite pretty, so there was no feature I had to awkwardly tiptoe around.
This time I was happy to accept.

I don’t know much about the background story of this character, only that she’s some kind of lion woman.
Plus, obviously, the details she had to have.
As expected, the painting went smoothly, my friend agreed on everything I proposed, and the changes she asked made sense and improved the final result.
Plus the real-life lion woman was happy with it, so hey, I guess this proves that rules can have exceptions.

2 Responses

1. Toni says:

   September 3, 2012 at 21:20

   I love it! And I know the friend and daughter. You did a great job…. and i agree, you shouldn’t have to change your talent for people’s ego’s, especailly if it doesn’t suit the overall intention of your work. Keep on keeping on….

   Reply
   • Paolo Puggioni says:

     September 4, 2012 at 12:38

     Thanks Toni!
     Oh well, to a certain degree I don’t mind trying to meet clients’ request, as long as they’re reasonable.
     The thing with family members is that they usually assume they can get away with being unreasonable:)
     But maybe it’s just my family, lol.

     Reply