Portrait painting is NOT a linear process. I moved the pastel painting forward with more layers of pastel and some subtle modeling of her nose and cheek. And then… dun dun dun… something just seemed off!
A bit of explanation is warranted here. There is a consistent and parallel tilt of eyes-nose-mouth-chin in every subject. The direction and degree of that tilt depends on the head's orientation on the paper/2D plane. Somehow between the charcoal block-in and this week's layers of pastel, I had lost the accurate tilt.
This tilt is important. At the very least it gives your drawing some verisimilitude. It's an integral part capturing likeness. It conveys attitude and emotion. Sometimes you want to exaggerate it to support the narrative of the piece. For this piece my model already conveyed a kind of mysterious serenity so it was important to me to get this accurate.
My brain was trying to override what my eyes were clearly seeing. One of the reasons faces can be difficult is simply we know faces too well. So our brains will give our hands directions to draw what we know a face looks like rather than the face our eyes observe. Apparently this is a common experience among figurative artists.
Cold comfort as I realized I had lost the tilt!
So this weekend I'll lift the eye (on our right), extend that eyebrow inward, and lift the right side (our view) of the mouth to regain the expression. Three steps back. Sigh.
