Eyes Are More Than Just Windows to the Soul....

...they are also a pain in the BUTT! lol. So I spent the little bit of time I worked on art last night and tonight just trying to adjust the eyes on my cousin, Greg. His head is tilted, which causes his eyes to be at a diagonal slant, which is a bit tricky to get sometimes. This is where I'm at now...and I can see it still needs adjustment.

I still need to lower the eye on our right, just a bit more. The eye on our left also needs adjustment...I see I've got it too open. After adjusting the eyes, I'll move on to tweeking everything else. And now that I've got it up on the computer, I can see his face looks a bit fatter than it should be. I'll need to slim him down some too. (You can always see things on the computer monitor, that you don't notice when the drawing is right in front of you. It's a strange phenomenon. lol.)

When I took the workshop with Nicole Caulfield in February, she told us that she believes that if you can get the eyebrows right, then you will have the likeness down. I don't remember the exact story of why she believes this, but basically it was because when shown pictures of just the eyebrows of well known celebrities, you could tell who the celebrity was by just the eyebrows, but when shown a picture of the same celebrities without the eyebrows, you couldn't tell. I haven't tested that theory out to myself...it sounds almost unbelievable. But, if that theory holds true, then that could that be why this particular portrait is giving me problems. His eyebrows are covered by his hair. That also would mean that I'll have problems with the cousin in the middle...because you can't see her eyebrows, they're blonde! lol. Just a thought.

So this is where I'm at right now. I think this weekend I might take some time to work on another 5x7 portrait for my portfolio. Just to work on something different. I can usually finish one of those in 3 -4 hours, so if I can find that much time to sit down, I will.

After I finish this portrait of my cousins, the next thing on my plate will be a portrait of my friend Hope and her wife. I was supposed to have it done by their wedding, back in August....but I was not happy with it. So I will be starting over. And we'll compare the two at the end. Oh what fun!! lol.