One eye or two?
 

I had recent discussion with an informed guy over whether we should "view" our subjects from life with one eye open or two. He said the atelier he attended in Italy taught him to use only one. To me this defeats the wonder of using both eyes to read the form. Most people will look at my finished work with 2 eyes, why not paint with 2 eyes? I feel if something happens using both eyes, I want that something to be apparent on my canvas.

Tim,

We had a discussion about this very subject in the Cafe. Look under "Advantage or Handicap?"

http://forum.portraitartist.com/show...=&threadid=678

I went there
 

I went there and got all fired up.

One eye or two
 

The way I heard it, using only one eye lets us see shape relationships, not their relative depths in the field of focus. One of the keys to painting, it seems to me, is to get the "shapes" down first.

By using one eye, we see more of these (shape) relationships. Later, you can open both eyes and begin modeling, which will begin the process of adding/subtracting depth. It lets us deal with one problem (related, though they are) at a time.

Dick Budig

Sounds good
 

Now, that makes sense to me.