I finished a pastel portrait of my partner's aunt last night, the one I'd been fighting with for a week. Her eyes finally came out right, that grey-green that shifts, and I felt good about it for maybe four hours. This morning I walked past it and the jaw is wrong, the whole left side of the face is too heavy, and I can't see the thing I saw yesterday at all.

It's not even a bad portrait. I know that. But I keep catching it out of the corner of my eye and going no, that's not her, that's not anyone.

Is this just what it is with pastel, where the fix is never done because you can always add one more layer on top of the one before it? Or do other people also go through the same cycle of loving a piece at night and distrusting it in daylight? I genuinely can't tell if it's the light changing or my brain deciding to lie to me on a schedule.