When I was in art school, a roommate/fellow student had a big commission: she was to paint a mantle-sized oil version of a small photograph. It was a sweet little picture of the client and the client's horse. (1/)https://twitter.com/coinaday1/status/1288109062421282817 …
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Now, the photo looked fine, but it had distortions caused by the camera lens. Blown up to, oh, 3'x4' or whatever, the client's head looked huge, arms stumpy, the horse a torpedo shaped monster. We asked our friend if she shouldn't perhaps adjust these things. (2/)
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"The client said she wanted it painted exactly like the photo," the friend said, "but I'm going to ask again." The next day, "yeah, she said she wants it exactly like the photo." So, a few months of work, and she delivers a giant head, and stumpy arms, and a weird horse. (3/)
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She got her payment, but I guess the collector pretty much cut contact afterwards. I think about that sometimes, and how the client's firm insistence that "you should paint it exactly like the photo" probably meant "make a painting that makes me feel like the photo" (4/4)
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Replying to @kendrictonn
Those sort of situations are so frustrating. Client education is a huge part of that type of one-on-one job. And that's often the sort that's "too busy" to get their full attention to walk them through "here's why you probably don't want quite exactly that".
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Replying to @coinaday1
Yeah, I can't really blame my friend, but it's such a difficult situation, particularly when the correct answer is probably "you're paying the bills, and told me you want X, but I'm just gonna deliver Y instead," like it was in the Horse Painting.
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Replying to @kendrictonn @coinaday1
were I in her shoes, I'd've blown up the photo on a xerox machine and sent that "please note the apparent size of X and Y ; I can imagine that perhaps we want to do Z in order to create feel Q" asking a precise question WITHOUT THINKING AHEAD TO MISUNDERSTANDING is bad
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"managing up" is an important skill for freelancers you don't get paid for doing what the client asks; you get paid for doing what the client wants / what makes the client happy
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Replying to @MorlockP @coinaday1
One thing that became obvious only in retrospect was how hard she (and I) found it to step outside of the cloistered art school environment, and even imagine what the client was likely to see or understand about the process, too; hard to do when you're marinating in it.
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Replying to @kendrictonn @coinaday1
on a tangent: paradoxically, as a sperg who has limited INNATE ability to understand other people, I've ended up building a very conscious process where I intellectually model other people, which is, I think, better than what normies have "for free". I am always tracking >>>
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what I know, what they know, what they think they know but are incorrect about, the three potential ways that they MIGHT understand X (and thus I need to disambiguate for them) etc etc etc
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Replying to @MorlockP @coinaday1
I believe I understand precisely what you're describing. Slightly tangentially again, but I'm reminded of how impossible it is to get useful advice from someone with massive natural talent in a subject, whereas the people who struggled (generally) have expressible insights.
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