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Hello Reader,

Here’s looking at you

We have all experienced the feeling that somebody is watching us – even if we are not looking directly at their eyes. And when we turn to meet the gaze and find it to be an animal, the eye-to-eye contact can feel almost magical, so long as the animal doesn’t see you as prey!

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It happened to me when I was cycling in the Pyrenees. I had summitted the col du Tourmalet, made famous by the Tour de France, and I was barrelling down a steep grade when I sensed I was being watched. I glanced over and there, hanging in the air just meters away, was an enormous red-tailed hawk gazing at me as it glided over the treetops. We were eyeball-to-eyeball, descending in unison at 35 mph. And then, just like that, it was over. This was no time for birdwatching!

Eye-to-eye contact like this can be profound and even life-changing for some. So, perhaps it is no surprise that locking eyes with a subject in a piece of art can affect us deeply too.

It is worth considering this as you work on a pet portrait. You can fuss over fabrics to mimic the body shapes and search for textures to imitate the fur, but the eyes are the magnets that grab our attention.

Naturally, it begs the question, how do you make eyes look realistic with fabric?

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The truth is, making eyes is not intuitive and, since many collage lovers have a quilting or sewing background, there’s often little or no previous experience to tap into.

There are endless tutorials online for painting and drawing eyes but they are not particularly helpful for making eyes on fabric, which behaves differently than paper or gesso-ed canvas. Add to the mix that little inside voice inside says:

…and it’s easy to lose your mojo.

The struggle

Making realistic-looking eyes has become a highlight for me, but I struggled for a long time. Believe me, I still have a bin of half-finished eyes to prove it.

You see, the first time I saw a quilted animal portrait with realistic eyes, it stopped me in my tracks. Quite literally. I stopped making portraits for well over a year. It became my mission to master the eyes but try as I might, I couldn’t pull it off. That is when I knew I had to go to the source and learn from the best.

An ah-ha moment

I booked a flight to Colorado for a 3-day workshop taught by Barbara Yates Beasley, a master of fabric collage animal portraits. The eyes in her portraits are mesmerizing. She calls them windows into the souls of animals.

Watching Barbara bring them to life with marker pens was a game-changer. It marked a new beginning in my portraits, as it has for many of her students.

Naturally, there is no right way to make eyes for a portrait. Some artists capture the eyes by layering fabrics, some thread-paint and others paint fabric with inks, dyes or coloured pencils. The eyes in my portraits these days are dyed and painted with ink.

If at first you don’t succeed

As I was cleaning up after my last collage project, I found a note pinned to the design wall that I had scribbled on a piece of paper some months ago. It said, ‘if at first you don’t succeed’. While it is true we learn from our mistakes, why stop there? As Groucho Marx famously said,

With that in mind, here are my top 5 mistakes and the lessons learned.

Mistake #1 Start with the wrong base colour for the eyes.

Lesson Learned: Irises come in many colours, but black is rarely one of them. If you only see a black eye, open the image in a photo editing app and lighten it until you can see the true colour. Choose a fabric colour slightly lighter than the true colour and then apply shading to darken it.

Check the photo to see where and how much shading is needed. It will introduce dimension and make the eye look round.

Mistake #2 Lay the eyes down after the face is in place.

Lesson Learned: It seems obvious to say this, but remember to place the eye fabric on the foundation before adding the eyelids. The eyeball rests in the eye socket and is covered by the eyelids so don’t place the eyes on top. If by chance the eyelids are placed down first, gently lift the edges and tuck the eye fabric underneath.

Mistake #3 Make assumptions based on what you know.

Lesson Learned: We assume a round pupil is perfectly round but is it round in the photo? We dismiss a reflection as a dot of white but is it round, or is it another shape? We assume the iris is all one colour but is it?

The shapes you see in a 2-dimensional photo are affected greatly by the angle of both the shot and the light striking the eyes. Study each eye individually and take note of what you see. It may not be what you expect.

Mistake #4 Make your best guess.

Lesson Learned: This is not the time to guess where the pupil goes and where the reflections are. If you miss the mark, your pet’s gaze will be off-kilter and out of sync with the rest of the portrait. And the viewer will notice it right away.

Trace the eye onto a piece of mylar/acetate and use this as a placement guide for painting or drawing the features onto the base fabric.

Mistake #5 Pray for a home run on the first try.

Lesson Learned: Learning to make eyes is not a one-and-done process, so push that notion to the back burner. Find a high- resolution photo of an animal’s eye online or use your own. Then practise making that eye.

Trace it upside down and right side up, and then try to perfect the eye, preferably over several days to allow your own eyes to rest and re-set. Hold it up to a mirror to check your work.

Below is an example for you to try. This photo is from Pixabay. If nothing else, look closely and imagine how you could apply these lessons learned.

Pixabay

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Your animal’s eyes might be a small part of your portrait, but they are no less important. So, if you’re after some realistic eyes, why not adapt these these tips to your own photo and, with some practise, you might find those eyes looking right back at you.

Next month, I will delve deeper into eyes and showcase the ways that collage artists use fabric, thread, and inks to create wondrous eyes for their portraits.