I've been on the same portrait for almost three weeks now. Not the whole portrait, the jaw. Left side, the shadow under it, where it turns toward the neck. There is a specific thing I want there, a softness, and I keep getting it and then losing it in the next stroke.

Soft pastel is unforgiving in this one way that keeps humbling me. You can't glaze over a mistake and pretend. You lift it with tape, you go back in, and the paper is a little more tired each time. I'm on Fabriano Tiziano, the grey, and at this point that whole corner has been worked so hard it's gone shiny. New pastel slides off it. So now the fix is to stop, and I don't want to stop, because stopping means admitting I have to start this one again.

I know the problem is that I'm painting the jaw from thinking instead of from looking. But that's the easy sentence to write. The hard part is that I can no longer see which of the five versions was the true one, I've stared so long. I put it against the mirror and it looks fine. I photograph it and it looks dead. Which do you trust?

For what it's worth the ear on that side finally works. Small mercy.