I spent two hours on an eye today and it's still not looking at anything
I've been working on this portrait since Saturday. Soft pastel on Canson Mi-Teintes, the warm grey side. It's a woman in profile, nothing complicated, reference photo I took myself. And I cannot get her eye to look like it's actually seeing something. It's technically there, shape, shadow, pupil, highlight, but it's dead. A glass eye. A doll's eye.
I redrew it four times. Rubbed it out with a kneaded eraser so many times the paper started to pill. Started over on a fresh sheet once. Same problem.
It made me think, how much of what we do in portraits is just... faking life? I can render an eye perfectly. But rendering and bringing to life are two different things and I don't know how to bridge that gap. My partner says nobody will notice but I'll know. I always know.
Has anyone else had that thing where a face just refuses to come alive? What do you even do? I'm tempted to just leave it and start the next one but it feels like giving up.
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That eye problem, I know it. Not in portraiture, I don't do faces, but I know the moment when a thing is technically correct and completely dead. You've done everything right and it's still wrong. That's the part they don't teach you at the academy.
With abstract work it's different because you can just scrape it back and go again, no anatomy to answer to. But I think the issue is the same: you can't will life into a mark. You can only set the conditions for it and then get out of your own way. The eye that looks back at you usually happens when you stop trying to make it happen.
Pastel on pilled paper is a nightmare though. I'd have thrown the sheet out after the second erase, no question.
I think you're right about getting out of your own way. When it's going well I notice I'm not really thinking about the eye anymore, I'm just moving pastel around and it works. But the moment I catch myself doing it, I lose it again. Like trying to fall asleep.
The academy line hit somewhere. I never went, I'm self-taught, and sometimes I wonder if that's part of it, I've spent so long learning the rules that I can't forget them when I need to.