If you can withstand the shock of the thock of the arrow passing through eyes, the simile ‘as close as a layer of paint’ could be used in less violent contexts.  Logue is a master metaphorist.

See also the bestellar reviews, complete with rich quote-mosaics, of Adam Nicolson’s magnificent Why Homer Matters and Logue’s War Music, a muscular rendition of several books of the Iliad. 

‘Arrows that thock, that enter eyes, that pass

Close as a layer of paint …’

Source: Christopher Logue, War Music: An account of Books 1-4 and 16-19 of Homer’s Iliad, London: Faber and Faber, 2001, p. 177

Photo credit: steinchen, pixabay.com