I’ve been wearing glasses for most of my life. I can’t see very far without them. It struck me how few peoples portraits include glasses. Yes I know they were not invented till a few hundred years ago, but people must have needed to wear them. I guess people take them off when they are painted or drawn. Mind you if I took mine off to draw the result would be really blurred! And yet sometimes I have to look at the subject through my glasses and look over them to draw. That is because over the years the lenses in your eyes get harder and the muscles that bring images into focus on the back of your eyes struggle to do that so people end up using reading glasses

It’s interesting to know most people’s eyeballs shrink as you get older so if you are short sighted your eyesight can actually improve!

And don’t get me on the subject of astigmatism… Misshapen eyeballs that mean verticals and horizontals can be off…..

Oh the joy of eye tests….want to know if someone is long or short sighted? Eyes look bigger behind glasses for long sighted and eyes look smaller behind glasses for shortsighted. I noticed that when I was young. You can always tell if an actor is wearing glasses just for the character because the glass is flat. You don’t see a change in the eye size and reflections on the glass are flat not curved.

I like painting glasses, they add character, I like noticing the shape of the shadows cast on the face and if the glass is tinted then you have to work out how visible the eyes will be……