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Blending Blending Demonstration Tortillons
 
Eyes
Eye
 
One of the basic faults of beginners is to use the same almond shaped 'eye symbol' that they used as children, this results in every face looking basically the same.


Eyes, rather like fingerprints, are pretty unique to a person and can, themselves, often identify an individual. Consider the difference between the eyes of Albert Einstein and Clint Eastwood... worlds apart!!! and both instantly recognisable.

Demo Demo

Care must be taken to draw the eyes of your subject... Observe and study the charactistics of each feature, this becomes routine with practise.

Remember... draw what you can see, not what you think you can see!!!
 
 
 

Trying to draw two, identical circles is very difficult using freehand... so I always use this circle template to ensure a perfect, crisp iris and pupil. Remember though... if the head is inclined to the left, right, up or down... then the iris will appear slightly eliptical.

 Template
   

THE PUPILS
eye I draw the pupil and iris in exactly the same way every time. No matter how many highlights are in the original photograph, I still draw just the one. If there are no highlights in the original, think about adding them... it gives the eyes life.  
     
eye The highlight is drawn overlapping the iris and the pupil. Because the eye is an orb, the highlight is drawn on the side towards the light source... in this case, the light source is from the right and above.  
     
BROWN... The colours of the eyes can be conveyed by the tonal value of the pencil.  
     
eye MID-GREEN / MID-BLUE... The tonal value is slightly higher and quite often surrounded by a darker border. Whether you draw this outer border or not, is usually determined by the size of your drawing and amount of detail required.  
     
eye PALE GREEN / PALE BLUE... The lightest of the tones... again, a visible darker border is quite often apparent around the iris.  
 
 
eye
 When drawing the lashes below the eye, don't have them sprouting out of the eyeball... note the lash line. And for a more natural effect, try to avoid the spider's legs type lash but draw them in clumps. Finally, because of the many tiny blood vessels and shadows cast by the lashes themselves, the white of the eye isn't actually white... in fact, making it too white will make it appear flat and give the impression of being pasted onto the face.
 
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