Hey, fellow art enthusiasts! Do you know what’s more complicated than drawing an eye? Drawing both eyes. And on a face! It does not help that eyes are the first thing we naturally notice when we see a drawing of a face, and if something is slightly off, the whole portrait looks a bit weird.
So, in this post, I’ll break down my process for drawing eyes on a face that seems to help me draw better eyes by demonstrating a portrait in 7 Steps following which I’ll share some strategies for improving your eye sketching skills. And by the way, there’s also an exercise at the end of the post that reportedly has been practiced by artists like Picasso and Van Gogh, so make sure to check that out!
Step 0: Know the anatomy and proportions of the eyes.
First, it is crucial to have a basic idea of the proportions of the eyes relative to the face as well as the structure of:
- the eyes,
- the eye sockets in which the eyes actually sit,
- and the muscle and fat cushioning the eyes.
Here are some key things to remember before we start drawing eyes because absorbing this information will help you draw eyes more convincingly on a face.
- The eyes sit on a curved skull and not on a flat plane.
- The eyeball is a sphere of the size of a ping-pong ball that sits inside the eye socket, and the iris protrudes outwards from the sclera (the white part of the eyes).
- The eyeball is about twice in diameter as the iris.
- The gap between both eyes is equal to the width of one eye, which is also about the same as the width of the nose.
- Extrapolating the center of the lips in the direction of the sides of the nose will converge along the outer edges of the eyes.
- The eyelids have some volume and are not paper-thin like many beginners draw.
- The upper and lower edges of the eye socket are not perfectly aligned when viewed from the side profile because the brow ridge protrudes slightly outwards compared to the base of the eyes.
- Eye level is approximately at the vertical center of the head.
Step 1 Draw the structure of the head.
The first step to drawing eyes on a face is to outline the structure of the face in the correct proportions and perspective.
Everything that goes into drawing the structure of the head is going to be too broad to cover in this post so if you’re new to portrait drawing, I suggest you read this quick Loomis Method guide.
Step 2 Construct the gesture lines across the face to define the overall angle at which the eyes will be placed.
One of the most critical aspects of drawing eyes in a portrait is to figure out the angle of the eyes relative to one another, depending on the head angle and foreshortening. It’s important to remember that the eye closer to view appears larger than the other, and these gesture lines should convey this effect.
I prefer drawing two gesture lines across the face tangential to the lower and upper edges of the eye sockets. If you close your eyes for a moment and try to locate these edges on your face, it would help you get a visual sense of where you want to draw these gesture lines and help you realize the position of the eyeball relative to these landmarks.
It is also necessary to consider the position of the browline at this stage because the gap between the browline and the upper edge of the eye socket that is closer to view should be larger than the gap on the other side of the face.
Step 3 Define the edges of the eye sockets by marking the ‘three eyes’.
There are two ways to go about this: You can either mark the inner edges of the eye socket by comparing it to the width of the nose and extrapolate this middle eye to the left and right to find the outer edges. Or you can start with the outer edges of both eyes first if that seems more easily recognizable, and figure out the inner corners by dividing the eye-to-eye length into three equal segments.
It’s important to remember that the width of the three eyes (counting the gap in the middle) will appear proportionately smaller away from the closest eye.
Step 4 Block in the general shape of the eyelids.
Using gesture lines