Dear Garth,
To answer to your very technical questions:
Magnifying glass
I do not work under magnifying glass, because I'll loose the general perception of the painting.
Pencil sharping
Indeed I sharp extremely well my Faber Castell pastel pencils and especially keep them in a dry place. The sharping of the pencils took me around 50% of the time I've spent on this work... Meanwhile I sharp them, I glaze at the drawing and think about it.
Hand trembling
Shall never start the work before my hands are trembling so the process of the sharpening helps. To finish the eyes had to fix my hands in such a way that only my fingers could move and like in shooting from guns, draw only from Expiration.
Concentration
But to tell the truth, to succeed the eyes like that I had to be in an extreme concentration. I was about to finish a huge 77"/99" group portrait so it was easy to get to a smaller scale. However in order to finish, for 3months...
3 months of total isolation
I had to close myself in Seattle in a basement with just a branch of Cherry tree coming to my window and receive food from a hole outside... Our house is surrounded by (what I call) tropical rain Forest so that monumental American nature and energy from the source (Vulcan's and Indians spirits) helped me to take the shock...
And of course the little squirrels, blue birds and my two little always laughing boys...
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