My new invention

I call it "stick and rubber band" LOL. Here's a good shot of my "studio" too. It's a table in the garage with a light over it, but there's room for a cup of coffee.

 I have been going somewhat crazy trying to get the eyes just right. I fixed the right eye (viewers left) and am happy with it but the other one was so far off I just took it off with a cotton swab down to the stained canvas.

Horizontal placement is easy with the proportional divider but the vertical placement is a different story. I first used the SWAG method (scientific wild ass guess) of placing the height of the eye pupil with a wash of burnt umber thinned with odorless mineral spirits. I was holding the paint brush and comparing the angle but I just wasn't sure. I felt like I kept losing the proper angle. This is what I did. I took a grease pencil and marked the plane of the eyes on the laminated reference photo. Then I took my camera tripod and secured a stiff straight stick to the pad with a rubber band. Placed the photo and canvas next to each other and set the angle to the line on the reference photo and compared it to the canvas by changing my eye level, not the tripod. I was very close but not perfect. All in all it worked good and it was cheap enough.

Thinking back, I wasn't sure why but the nose always looked too short even though according to the grid it was in the right spot. I know it's too wide but that's another issue (I have plenty of those). The answer was the eyes were just a little too low. It also resulted in a slightly bigger forehead below the hair line. I thought the hair was off but I was wrong. This marks a first for me. I thought I was wrong once before, but I was mistaken! When I was a mechanic I used to say "there's no substitute for experience". This holds true for most things. It's mistakes like this that you (hopefully) learn from and learn to avoid in the future. Some days you learn more than others if you know what I mean. These last two days I learned a boatload. The biggest problems were my grid and reference photo. The grid wasn't even. As the grease pencil point dulled it threw off the spacing. Not much, just enough to give me grief. I switched reference photos for detail around the eyes. The one I have been using is better for color but too dark to see the detail needed to shape the upper lids. After redoing the eyes (yes both, again) here is where I'm at.

Here is a transparent overlay on the painting. The reference is the transparency. The hats are a little off, but the eyes are almost perfect. To me, it's the eyes that make or break a portrait. If the eyes are wrong you'll never completely capture the expression of the subject.

 Now I just have to fix the nose , the lips and retouch the color here and there. Then I can start on the other face. I may take a break from it though and let what I have done dry to avoid an accidental disaster.
Happy painting!