Reception for my 'Photoreal Emperor Project' has been overwhelmingly positive but I want to address some reoccurring criticisms.

People are looking at the first image of Augustus, claiming I made him blond-haired and concluding that my depictions must be too white. 1/

First off, where data was lacking (more often than not) I defaulted to family place of birth and generally referenced the sunshine skin colour chart.

Early versions of sunscreen *did* exist but I assumed most people didn't wear any. I erred darker. 2/

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/346/6212/934/F3

One writer, Suetonious writing many years after Augustus' death, has a vivid description ...but people make shit up.

I assumed there was degree of bananaphone.

Maybe Suetonious he was describing polychomic statues? I don't know. 3/

Many people have pointed out that Romans *wanted to* portray themselves as dark-skinned.

So literal translations are not great. See what this author wrote about it. 4/

https://twitter.com/dvoshart/status/1288431852148203521

I wasn't ignoring modern academics saying he had dirty-blond/brown hair. Low resolution caused some confusion.

I was factoring that he was 75 at was de-romanticizing young portraits. Grey hair on dirty blond is clearer in high res. 5/ https://twitter.com/dvoshart/status/1288465640966291462

If you want to meaningfully impact a portrait, please tag me in a discussion.

I don't claim perfection. This is more art than science.
I am not a historian. I don't speak Latin.

Will I change these if I'm wrong? Yes, but I need actual citations. 6/

~END OF THREAD FOR NOW~

~MORE~
Pretty much everywhere this is shared, someone says my depiction of Augustus looks like Daniel Craig. These two photos show how the hair and skin tone change based on lighting. Fist similar to Augustus light.

Toplit + Off-axis keylight
Flash photo (+more tanned?)

One other note: looking at the image in ‘night mode’ skews the grey hair blonde. I’m noticing this now on my iPad and re-reading this thread seems like I’m BSing.

Emperors were made almost exclusively on a daylight (cool) tuned monitor.