Preamble

Our eyes can tell a lot. Smile, express anger, indignation, simply put every existing emotion. And even falling in love with a glance is quite within our power. After considering the general structure of the head, each part of the face must be carefully analysed. It is necessary to study their main external characteristics and features of their “structure”, which is the key to achieving a similarity of the portrait with the original. The eyes can be the most striking expressive element.

Note that the eyeball is not actually as white as a piece of paper, and that it takes on different hues not only from its own shadow, but also from the eye shadow. The rigid base of the eyes is the orbital cavities, located under the superciliary arches of the frontal bone. The eyeball is placed in the orbital cavity. The anterior part of the orbit and the eyeball is covered with a ribbon of the circular muscle of the eye, including the thickness of the two parts of the eyelid (upper and lower).

When studying parts of the face, I advise you to more often analyse the bone and muscle structure, which we analysed earlier.

1

First of all, stick to the spherical shape of the eye, filtering out the details. This will help to convey the volume. Do not forget about the overhanging volume above the upper eyelid and the hollow in the inner part.

The eye elements

2

Do not leave an eyeball tone as simple white sheet. The highlight will be either on the pupil or on the thickness of the lower eyelid. Depending on the angle of course and lighting.

No more ´white paper´

3

Correctly define the nature of the look. The movement of the eyelids will depend on it.

The look

4

The reflected spot in the pupil is always on the opposite side of the highlight. This will give the eye a catchy effect.

Pupil

5

Group your eyelashes into bunches and try not to attach too much importance to them. We also group the eyebrows into a spot and only draw a few tufts of hair on top.

Eyelashes and eyebrows

6

The eyelids and the eyeball obey the same form. Lighting on them is distributed in the same way. Do not work separately on the eyelids and the eyeball.

Eyelid and eyeball

Schemes

I start again with a general silhouette. With thin lines I outline the boundaries of the entire area of the eye. I imagine a line from one corner of the eye to another, thereby setting the movement.
With bold and dark lines, I draw the upper eyelid. It bulges forward, so it will be darker and more contrast than the lower eyelid and pupil. Don't forget to show the folds (in red) that define the look. The more accurately you convey the curves of these lines, the more similar the look will be. I draw shadows and light with thin lines. Thus, with dark lines I outline the foreground, and with thin light lines - the rest of the composition.

Let's get to the tonal drawing. Squinting my eyes, I look at the reference and determine where the shadow spot, light and highlight are located (pic 2). I stroke the entire eye, except for the glare. I make shadow part of the drawing 2-3 tones darker to create a clear difference between the shadow and the light. At this point, I lightly smudge the entire hatching with my finger to evenly smear the tone. It turns out a layer on which I will further make clear shading. (pic 3) I marked the foreground with a black line in the middle, here there will be the most contrasting shadows. On the right, a smaller spot will be a reflex. Together they form a shadow spot. On the left, the largest spot will act as the light in the work. And again, we return to the ball: light, shadow, reflex. Make sure that the spots in the reflection are not darker than the shadows in the foreground. But you should not make them too light either, so that the reflex does not argue with the light.

I will work on the upper and lower eyelids separately. I have my own approach to drawing shadows. For me, a shadow is not just a black spot, it should also be alive and interesting.

• To achieve this shadow play, I first make an even tone (pic. 1).
• Then with a hard black line I outline the contours of this shadow in some places (pic. 2)
• It can be seen how the shadow has become more voluminous, more attractive, deeper. I add more volume to the eyelids by shading in shape (pic. 3)

The entire side of the reflex looks like an ordinary dark spot. I work carefully in it so that the main shadows in the foreground remain in the first place, and the shadows in the reflection are secondary.

I also shade the eyeball. I never leave it white. Also, you cannot draw highlights on the cornea in random order. They must always be in their place. When a beam of light falls on the corneal mucosa, which has a convex lens shape, it passes through it and is reflected by a small bright spot in the opposite direction. The figure below shows the options when the light falls on the right and left. The highlight and the reflected spot are on the same line.

Also, to make the iris look more realistic, I draw a thin shadow from the upper eyelid (pic. 1).

Then I work on the overhanging round muscle of the eye, the area under the lower eyelid and the fossa in depth. Here again you need to return to the form, to understand how it moves. This will make it easier to hatch and draw the shape correctly. The second picture shows schematically how one plane passes into another. The stroke line defines the movement of these planes. The third picture shows large tonal spots. This is how the whole work should look, despite the many details. So that when you squint your eyes and look at the picture, you see just such a general picture.

Eyebrow and eyelashes. I prefer to leave such small lines for last, making their drawing one of the final stages. Eyebrows will never be the same tone along the entire growth line. The eyebrow lies in the shape of the superciliary arches, which are semicircular. The light will not fall uniformly in this shape. Such an image of the eyebrow adds volume without drawing all the attention to itself. I take away the part of the eyebrow that falls into the shadow more into the stain. And in the part that is in the light, I try to draw more individual hairs. I show eyelashes in several bunches. I press lightly on the pencil. They should look easy, without attracting the whole accent.

And this is what the finished eye looks like. Big, light, stylish.

1. Draw an eye according to the reference from the lesson.

2. Draw your eye, choosing an interesting angle and lighting. The more shadows, the easier it is to show similarity and volume.