Speaking of the son whose eyes disappear when he smiles…the 19 year old boy has Jury Duty today.  He received his first summons a couple of weeks ago and was thrilled to know he’d be called while on home from college during his Christmas break.  Yeah…can you totally see the sarcasm dripping down your monitor?  We are actually hoping he gets seated on a jury.  Would be a good experience for him, and it’s not like he’s missing schoolor work.  But, for some odd reason, the boy doesn’t agree with us.  Imagine that.  LOL

One question that has always plagued me since the beginning of my repaint work…why must the eyes be perfectly symmetrical in size and shape?  It’s not really a rhetorical question, although I really think I already know the answer.  But it has always struck me a little odd that minute variations in a pair of dolly eyes can often spell the difference between a sale or non-sale.   I’ve studied…I mean REALLY studied…human eyes in photographs, and it’s crystal clear to me that no human has perfectly symmetrical eyes.  This was made even more clear to me (Can anything be more clear than crystal?) during my research on the face of our First Lady, Michelle Obama.  I was recently commissioned to do a lookalike doll, and when asked to do celebrities or lookalikes, I usually spend a good deal of time studying numerous photos of the actual person long before ever picking up a paintbrush.  Our First Lady’s eyes are nowhere near the same size.  One eye is quite decidedly smaller than the other, and it’s most noticeable when she is smiling.  I thought long and hard about making the eyes on the doll version of Mrs. Obama true to her human counterparts in size, but then chose not to do so.  I’m glad I went with the approximation of symmetry, and I think my client is as well.  I wonder if we, as human beings, do not truly look people in the eyes when we speak with them…so much so that we don’t actually notice the lack of symmetry.  But when regarding the face painted onto a vinyl canvas, we are free to scrutinize at length without fear of offending the doll.  Therefore, we are more critical, more demanding of perfection.   :::shrug:::   I can’t really put my finger on anything else that makes sense.  So, I suppose I shall stick with that assumption until something more acceptable comes along.   Studying eyes at length, in photos of both humans and dolls, is still my best tool for improving my own eye painting skills.  Practice makes perfect.  That’s what I’ve always been told.   My doll eye painting is far from perfect.  I guess I’m still practicing.