How to Draw Realistic Eyes

hey I'm Darlene and you're watching a rapid fire art tutorial in this video I'll walk you through step by step how to draw eyes from the three-quarter View I'll be using an HB pencil for the construction phase and a 2B pencil for everything else if you only have an HB pencil that's okay just press harder when we move to the shading section I'll also be using a kneaded eraser which you can make using any solid eraser check out my DIY video to learn how to make one and lastly a regular facial tissue for blending okay let's get started using an HB pencil and very light pressure draw a circle it doesn't have to be perfect mine is about four and a half centimeters in diameter we're going to make a similarly sized circle on the right for the other eye the spacing between them should be a little less than a circle apart you can measure this out if you feel like it I'm just doing it roughly let's draw a faint line through the center of both circles now let's draw the shape of each eye starting on the left from the three-quarter view this eye will not appear to span the entire eyeball so instead of drawing the eye this big we'll draw the eye shape from here to here along the faint line we drew earlier for the top eyelid draw an arch begin and end your stroke at the top of the tick marks that you made for the bottom eyelid start at the inner corner of the eye round off this corner while you're at it angle your stroke up slightly in the tear duct area draw a curve where the dip is closer to the left side of the eye now let's draw the ledge of each eyelid to give them thickness to do that just create an outline around each eyelid but don't go all the way to the right for both eyelids start on the left side of the eye and Curve Your stroke out beyond the boundary of the eyeball to make it look like the eyelid skin wraps around the other side of the eyeball above the top eyelid let's draw the eyelid crease taper your stroke so it almost touches the inner corner of the eye over on the left side wrap your stroke down creating the edge of the upper eyelid to draw the edge of the face give yourself a little distance from the eye and draw a stroke that kind of runs perpendicular to this guideline Above This draw a convex curve creating a protruding brow bone if you want you can draw a stronger brow that protrudes more for the lower half draw a slight concave stroke that leads into the cheekbone let's work on the right eye now the inner corner of the eye falls slightly outside the eyeball again draw your tick marks along this guideline since the right eye faces us more directly we'll see more of this eye so we'll cover more lateral space here okay let's outline our eye shape starting at the inner corner of the eye draw a steep slope leading into the top eyelid for the tear duct area create a stroke that runs almost parallel to the guideline now let's draw the top eyelid making sure to end our stroke where the tick and guideline intersect if you want to make sure both eyes match in terms of how open they are you can measure and compare the space between the eyelids I'm just going to roughly eye it because honestly I'm pretty lazy for the outer corner of this eye we want to make sure the top and bottom eyelids come together to form a point for the bottom lid draw a curve where the dip is closer to the right side of the eye now draw the upper eyelid crease by drawing a curve similar to this one make sure the left side of your stroke is closer to the eye creating a taper let's draw the irises now avoid drawing two bracket shapes because it will look less realistic and it'll be difficult to size properly to draw a realistic looking Iris you'll want to draw a full circle about half the diameter of the eyeball you can use a ruler to measure it out I'm just eyeballing it position the iris to the far right of the eye so it's looking at us make sure the lower half of the iris is more visible than the upper half we will be erasing parts of the circle that fall on the skin but not yet because we'll need it for another step so just leave it as is for now and we'll come back to it in a minute continue to keep your lines faint so they'll be easy to erase now draw the other Iris if you have a difficult time getting both irises to look in the same direction pay attention to the leftover space on each side of the iris making sure that both eyes are similar darken parts of your circle that fall on the eyeball around the outer part of the right eye draw the ledge for the top and bottom eyelid let's make the lower one more visible by stretching it all the way to the tear duct at this point check to see if you want to make any adjustments to your drawing take a step back from your Sketchbook to reset how you view the drawing so you can see it as a whole okay happy with your eye shapes and Iris positions let's move on to the pupils which sit smack dab in the center of each Iris you can locate the center of the Iris by drawing a vertical and horizontal line through the middle where the two lines meet draw your pupil make it any size you'd like the size of your pupil depends on how brightly you want to light the subject if your subject is in a dimly lit room the pupil should be large in a very bright environment the pupil will become much smaller I prefer a medium-sized pupil let's draw another Circle in the eye for the Highlight this is a reflection from a light source such as a light bulb we want to overlap it with the pupil so we can create some high contrast in the eyes making our drawing more interesting to look at I've placed the Highlight in the top right side of the iris to indicate that the light in this scene is coming from the top right and then follow the same steps to draw the pupil and highlight in the other eye now let's draw the nose very lightly though start your stroke very close to the left eye extend upward and then downward to form the nose Bridge okay let's get rid of our construction lines we don't need those anymore make sure your remaining lines are very faint because we don't want them showing through in the end let's start shading things I'm switching to a 2B pencil it's slightly softer than the HB pencil which allows me to blend my drawing more easily and shade slightly darker without having to use much pressure if you only have an HB pencil that's completely fine just be careful not to press too hard because you could rip the paper warp it or make the drawing look super reflective sharpen your pencil very well and then shade each pupil as dark as you can without crossing over into the space that we've allocated for the highlight make sure your edges are clean and sharp instead of blurry and undefined something optional you can do to make your highlight look more unique is ADD obstructions like a rectangle a round shape or any random silhouette I think it'll make the drawing more interesting to look at do the exact same thing for the other eye now let's shade the irises starting with the left one darken and thicken the outline of your iris how dark that's up to you I want to draw a very dark Iris if you're not sure what you'd like just do it lightly for now and you still have the option to darken it more later after all it is easier to add graphite than to remove it from your drawing fade your graphite out as you work your way toward the center of the iris since the main light source for my subject comes from above the top eyelid will cast a shadow upon the iris shade your cast Shadow darkest at the top and Fade Out as you work your way down then add a lighter even layer of graphite across the rest of the iris shade lightly step back from your drawing to see if you'd like it to be any darker if so add another layer of graphite pressing slightly harder this time whatever value you decide to go with make sure the rim and cast Shadow are darker the Highlight isn't coming across very well let's clean it up carefully making sure the edges remain sharp I'm using my kneaded Eraser rolling it to a fine point to erase precisely where I need to do you like how your iris looks if you think it looks a little blah try bumping up the contrast by darkening the cast Shadow and the rim even more I find that higher contrast has a way of grabbing my attention feel free to shade your iris however dark you'd prefer once you're happy do the same thing for the right eye let's move on to the rest of the eyeball to give the eyeball a round shape let's again revisit the source of light in our drawing the main light source is coming from the top right so surface is facing away from that direction will appear darker let's shade the part of each eyeball that's facing away from the main light source starting with the left eye gradually lighten up your Strokes as the surface of the eyeball starts facing toward the direct light instead of starting right at the edge of the eyeball leave a tiny strip of light on the very far left to account for a reflected light or ambient light now that we've shaded the left side of the eyeball the surface should look curved instead of flat I'm also going to add a cast Shadow along the top of the eyeball to account for the light that's being blocked by the top eyelid this part of the eyeball faces the light more directly but it's actually pretty deep and the skin surrounding it blocks quite a bit of light from getting in so I've given it a solid light layer of graphite and then added cast Shadows from the surrounding skin shade around the outside of the iris just slightly so the edge looks slightly blurred I'm going to show you another way to blur the right side of this Iris in a minute so I'm just going to leave it like this for now okay for the right eyeball let's start in the tear duct area there's a bit of pink flesh here we can separate this area from the eyeball using a shallow curve inside this space draw one or two more lines separating this space into additional sections then shade them in lightly to make these look bumpy lighten the right side of each one I'm just using the fine tip of my kneaded Eraser and dabbing very lightly you can control how much graphite you remove by varying your pressure now let's shade the eyeball make it darker on the left side and gradually lighter as you work your way to the right toward the main light source this entire eye is facing the main light source more directly so the eyeball shouldn't be shaded as dark as the left eyeball don't forget about the cast Shadow above shade a little around the iris to soften the edge in the corner here shade darkest where the eyeball touches the eyelids um I may have shaded this part a little bit too dark but it's okay I'll fix it later soften the edge of the Iris by shading over it gently make sure your shading is as smooth as you can get it because we're going to blend this now if you have any gaps between your pencil Strokes they will likely still be visible after blending you can use any blending tool of your choice I'm using a regular facial tissue from my local grocery store to blend more precisely fold your tissue in half twice and then create a point by folding it like so use this point to lightly blend the border of your iris so as mentioned the other way to soften the edge of your iris instead of using a pencil is to smudge it with your clean or even dirty tissue the graphite on the tissue will transfer to the drawing creating a soft blurring effect to avoid over smudging rotate to a cleaner spot often or find a clean spot on your tissue and fold it up again to make your pointy blending tool for larger spaces like this you can just wrap the tissue around your finger and blend from the lightest Zone into a darker Zone to avoid smearing your work if your index finger is too large for the space you're blending try using the very tip of your finger or a smaller finger to blend these small spaces let's switch back to a pointy tissue if you're too lazy to refold your tissue so you can work with a clean tip you can always rotate it to a clean spot or you can try blending while barely touching the paper and start with the light areas first if you accidentally smear your graphite too much you can use your kneaded eraser to lighten up the space by using a pointy tip and very gently dabbing the graphite to lift it away layer by layer like I'm doing here blend it again if it looks grainy as you blend you may want to erase blemishes and inconsistencies or use your pencil to fill in slight gaps to make your drawing look more smooth after you're done let's shade all of the skin just a light and even layer of graphite don't worry about where the skin should be lighter or darker to shade a large area quickly and evenly hold your sharpened pencil with an overhand grip like this use the side of the graphite to create thick Strokes limit the movement in your wrist and fingers and instead use your elbow and shoulder to move a writing grip gives you narrow Strokes that takes a lot of patience to fill a large area and it's kind of hard to keep your Strokes really close together anyway with an overhand grip try to keep your Strokes close together to minimize gaps if you see gaps just go over the same spot again using the same amount of pressure if your pencil sounds very scratchy and your graphite is running out quickly try stripping the wood off your pencil to expose about an inch of graphite then scribble off to the side until the scratchy sound is gone and you have a nice thick stroke if you need to take a break or change the way you're holding your pencil for any reason do a scribble test on a scrap sheet of paper before you continue shading otherwise you may catch a sharp edge resulting in areas where your shading suddenly looks oddly darker and sharper let's blend the skin lightly be careful around the eyes that you don't smudge what you've already worked on especially those details in the iris try to use a clean spot on your tissue for each swipe if you want to blend smoothly you might want to avoid rubbing your tissue back and forth like this especially using a lot of pressure see how the graphite builds up in random areas making the skin look blotchy if you prefer a back and forth motion like I do just make sure you're doing it very gently and move to a clean spot on the tissue frequently if you want to blend this narrow space without blurring your line work instead of using this large soft part of your finger try using the very tip of your finger instead if there are blemishes which is normal use your kneaded eraser to eliminate them gently instead of rubbing it with a solid eraser again you can make one of these easily using regular eraser crumbs and Post-it notes check out my DIY video to learn how I'm going to add a slightly darker layer of graphite over this to darken the skin if you prefer to draw lighter skin you can leave it as is if you're not sure please continue watching and you can decide after this step let's blend our drawing again and then remove some blemishes if there are any if you have large white gaps fill them in very gently using the tip of your pencil if you want to draw even darker skin feel free to add additional layers using more pressure keep in mind that we're going to add some dark shadows later on so if you're using an HB pencil only you may not want to shade this base layer too dark because your pencil might give you a hard time later on after blending My Line work usually becomes much lighter I'll just darken them slightly because I want to make sure that you can still see what I'm doing if you can still see the nose Bridge leave it as is we definitely don't want that outline to show through after we've shaded the nose we're going to shade the upper eyelid now since our main light source comes from the right we'll need to shade the left side of this to make it look as though the skin curves around the eyeball and away from the light let's leave the very left of the eyelid much lighter to account for reflected light or ambient light bouncing onto the skin from the surrounding environment by the way if you want to learn more about light and how to shade visit my in-depth shading tutorial down in the video description to make the eyelid even more shapely we can shade this top section and bottom section leaving a strip of light in between feather your Strokes out as you work your way toward the middle of the eyelid let's do similar shading for the right eye an important thing to remember is that the right side of the face is facing the light source more directly so remember to shade the entire right side of your face a little lighter than the left side overall I'm not going to narrate this part because we've already gone over this with the left eye when you're done just make sure that the left side of the eyelid is darker than the right to make the form look round if the boundary between your eyelid and Eyeball is not obvious darken part of the eyelid closest to the eyeball let's draw some bags below each eye first gently thicken the outline of the bottom eyelid ledge Now sort of copy this shape drawing it just below and then shade it in like so to make the skin look puffy then shade the left and right to make it look as though the skin hugs the eyeball make sure the left side is darker than the right you can leave a strip of light on the very left to account for ambient light if you want your bags to look more subtle you can decrease your pencil pressure to shade more lightly I will eventually shade these bags even darker so do what you think is best for your own drawing and preference for the right eye bag again kind of mimic the shape of the bottom eyelid we'll shade the bottom the far right and thicken the ledge outline if you've been shading lightly but you still find the bags too puffy for your preference you can shade a light layer of graphite over the lighter areas of the bag to flatten it out basically reducing the contrast alright over to the nose area start here shading quite dark on the left side of the nose an area facing away from the direct light as you work your way toward the left eye and up toward the brow lighten your Strokes gradually to indicate that the form is starting to catch more light create a curve similar to the overall eye shape as you shade this area to form the brow if you want to emphasize the brow bone shade darker darken the far left side of the face feather your Strokes out as you work your way to the right let's shade the top side of the eyelid crease make it darkest near the crease and lighter As you move away this Shadow along the lower eyelid doesn't look dark enough let me just fix that real quick add a light layer of graphite below the bag to make the transition between dark and light appear more gradual I should also continue the brow shading all the way to the left shade a light layer of graphite along the value transition zone here to make the brow bones Edge appear softer more rounded as you go along and darken the drawing little by little you may feel like previously shaded areas are now too light this is normal and you can darken those areas as you go constantly tweaking we're not printers after all if you like it the way it is keep it like that moving back to the right side let's shade the section between the eye and cheekbone fade it out very gradually on the right side this area here under the brow bone fade it out on the right side and make the very left slightly darker also shade along the top of the eyelid crease to transform it from an ordinary line into a crease remember to shade darkest near the crease and lighter As you move away from it let's also darken the skin near the outer corner of the eye just like the left side the darker you shade this area above the eye the more prominent the brow bone will appear casting the eye area in a darker Shadow so shape this area to the level that you prefer OK let's lightly shade this side of the nose Fade Out at the top and right side you should now have this giant y shape now you have a good idea of how the nose will look do you like how broad it is if not you can adjust the base of your y shape bringing it in for a more narrow nose or shape it however you'd like up to you I'm making it just slightly narrower next we're going to shade an even light layer of graphite across the y shape Fade Out at the top and avoid shading this area along the bridge to account for direct light hitting the nose once you're done you'll notice that the nose looks pretty blocky we need to make the ridge look curved to do that shade a strip of slightly darker graphite along the left side to indicate that that side faces away from the light leave a narrow strip of light on the far left to account for ambient light check your drawing over before we start blending to make sure there are no major gaps between your pencil Strokes take a look at the bags under each eye notice something different between the two the shading under the left one transitions gradually into the bright area below whereas the right one is very abrupt because I forgot to soften it out it's kind of difficult to keep track of every single step while recording such a long tutorial so sorry about that guys let's shade right under this bag Feathering our Strokes out as we work our way down that's much better now we're going to blend all of the new graphite that we added make sure your shading is already fairly smooth you don't need to blend the graphite each time you shade if you don't want to I'm just trying to make my drawing as smooth as I can get it it's really just a preference thing again after blending you may notice your drawing is a bit lighter if you want you can go back over some areas and darken them like I'm doing now or if you like it more this way you can leave it as is just do whatever you prefer and whatever you think looks good I am using budget friendly tools here so the process is not the most optimal if you want to blend the graphite without making your drawing lighter you can try using a very soft bristled paintbrush make sure you're happy with your shading overall before drawing the eyebrows check to see if your shading is smooth enough or dark enough for you I think these two spots could be a little darker let me quickly shade those okay eyebrow time starting with the right side we'll first Mark three light ticks using the eye as a reference point for each at an angle from the inner corner of the eye draw one tick for the beginning of the eyebrow at an angle from the outer corner of the eye draw another for the eyebrow tail the point where the eyebrow arches is closer to the tail end of the eye you don't have to be too exact here now we have some guidelines to start planning the eyebrow shape we can draw this outline using little tick marks instead of a solid continuous line this allows us to plan out the eyebrow shape without having an unnatural outline showing through in the end the cool thing is that the faint ticks will blend in as you draw the actual eyebrow keep your outline faint so you can easily erase mistakes are you happy with your eyebrow outline and its position above the eye if so let's sharpen our pencils and practice drawing hairs use a confident Swift motion with a lift at the end to create hair like Strokes making sure the end of each hair is tapered instead of blunt it may take some practice also you don't need to draw it quickly try different speeds and find what works for you I find that going too fast makes it difficult for me to curve my Strokes pause the video and continue when you're ready start from the left side of the eyebrow drawing hairs that point upward vary the degree that each hair curves to make them look more natural follow your eyebrow outline while staggering the starting point of each stroke so the root position doesn't look too predictable here's a clear example of what I mean as you work your way to the right angle your stroke more so they start pointing to the right when you get to the tail of the eyebrow your hair should be pointing downward add more rows of hair as you continue to fill the space you've outlined for your eyebrow if you're having a difficult time placing hairs in a less uniform way try jumping around randomly from one section to another you can also elongate the thick end of each hair to change the root location as you approach the upper boundary of your eyebrow Curve Your Strokes more along the top of your eyebrow you can add extremely thin and light downward pointing hairs if you like you can add some random faint stray hairs around the eyebrow to make your eyebrow look more integrated with the face shade it very lightly and give it a slight cast Shadow along the bottom let's outline the left eyebrow we only need to Mark where the eyebrow starts because it arches at the edge of the face and the tail should not be visible to us from this angle as for how far up to draw we'll use the first eyebrow as a baseline or a reference to draw matching eyebrows hold your pencil up to your drawing matching the angle of the eyes now lock your pencil into that position slash angle and slide up until you reach the base of the right eyebrow now you know how high up to draw the left eyebrow so it matches the right one if you want you can slide up some more and you'll figure out how high you should Arch the left eyebrow you can do the same thing to find the highest point of the eyebrow and this point of the eyebrow now that you have those areas figured out you can simply connect the dots to create the rest of your outline fill in the outline similarly to how we did it on the right before drawing the actual eyebrow hair sharpen your pencil so each hair looks sharp and clean here's the direction I'll point the eyebrow hair when you get to the edge of the face Point your Strokes out Beyond the Edge of the face and angle them down add a few thin light hairs further down so it looks like they're peeking through from the other side of the face the side that's out of our view if the eyebrow is too sparse go through and add more hair again you can make your eyebrow look more natural by adding some unruly hair that kind of points in random directions from the surrounding hairs lightly shade the eyebrow sharpen your pencil again and go over any hairs you'd like to darken I'm particularly darkening hairs in this section you'll notice that the left eyebrow is slightly darker than the right because the right one is facing the direct light I'm not really sure why the right eyeball looks so flat I'm just going to quickly darken the left side of it and then blend it again eyelash time let's start with the top eyelid of the right eye we're going to use a sharpened pencil to draw Swift Strokes for eyelashes near the center of the eyelid we'll draw a narrow J shape as you work your way to the right widen your JS until they're almost straight as you work your way to the left do the same thing but flip your J's so they look like they're pointing to the left when you start filling in more eyelashes you'll notice that they may look too uniform and unnatural to make them look more natural you can taper some hairs together or cross them over each other I have a whole video on drawing eyelashes so if you want to learn more about it visit the description let's start by placing a narrow J shape somewhere near the middle of the eyelid this is a front facing Lash as you work your way to the right widen the J shape until the lashes are almost straight to make your lashes look even more natural you can try varying the length of each one just slightly so they look less uniform and less predictable take your time with each and every lash visualizing it before you draw it as you work your way left angle your Strokes so the lashes Point toward the left and make them shorter thinner and lighter if you find your lashes are too light or Too Short you can always sharpen your pencil and go over each individual lash to darken or elongate them take your time with each one if you draw a weird looking lash Don't Panic roll your kneaded eraser to a fine point and simply dab the whole lash away without affecting the surrounding lashes or shading but be patient because it may take a minute and then you can change the Lash direction or whatever it is you want to fix for the lower lashes you can use J shapes or more straightened out Strokes based on your preference this time we'll use much lighter Strokes that are much shorter draw your lashes along the outline that we drew for the eyelids ledge try to keep these lashes sparse to do that you can taper or cross most of your lashes over each other instead of just a few for the left eye let's start right here drawing Strokes that point upward as we work our way along the rest of the eyelid the lashes will Point toward the left more extremely most of the lashes on this eye will point leftward because of how the face is angled as I go along I'm drawing random lashes that point in the opposite direction so things don't look too uniform just make sure most lashes point to the left you might want to hop back and forth between the two eyes to make sure the Lash lengths and thicknesses look similar I'll just be hopping back and forth to elongate some lashes thicken erase or add more lashes so the drawing looks more balanced I like how the lashes on the left eye look thick and mascarid so I'm going along and thickening these ones drawing the lower lashes for the left eye should be pretty straightforward now draw these lighter and shorter than the upper lashes if you think your lashes could be a little bit darker or longer just go over them again now once you're happy with how your lashes look let's give some texture to the skin where the upper lashes grow out of use a scribbly loopy motion like this I'm going to avoid blending this because I don't want to blur the eyelashes next I'm going to increase the contrast first by darkening the shadow zones and then brightening the lightest areas to make the drawing pop out of the page by playing with the contrast you can push and pull certain areas of your drawing to bring attention to areas you really want the viewer to focus on or to achieve certain effects for example high contrast in the iris might give your eyes more soul you can make the eyes look sort of mysterious by darkening this area casting the eyes in Shadow you can darken the upper eyelids like you're applying makeup for a seductive look there's so much you can do and the areas that you darken and the degree that you darken them are totally up to you and your artistic choice I know it's taken you quite some time to get to this point in the tutorial and can totally understand if you have any hesitation with darkening your drawing further it's completely fine if you decide to stop here but I would strongly encourage you to continue if this is as dark as you'd like to go please skip to the section on eyelash Reflections and highlights before you close your SketchBook alright let's continue you don't have to darken the exact areas I'm going over I'm just seeing what feels right to me and what I think might look good for my particular drawing I'm going to darken the upper eyelid creases and the shading around them this will draw a lot more attention to the eyes it helps to take frequent steps away from your Sketchbook to see it from afar this will help you decide where you want to darken the drawing further you can actually leave the eyelid skin unblended at this point because we've already Blended the layers of shading underneath these new pencil Strokes can conveniently come across as Skin texture I feel like the eyeball and skin below the eye could be slightly darker I'm not doing anything new here again just going over certain dark areas and making them darker we can draw more attention to the Iris by darkening the Border if your pupil isn't already as dark as you can get it shade that too now I'll do similar things to the right eye now that the skin is quite smooth we can add some details to it like the little wrinkles you would see below the eyes without them disappearing just draw some fanned out lines under the eye very lightly make sure your pencil isn't too blunt these lines should have some spacing between them so they come across as wrinkles it's just a very subtle detail you can leave these wrinkles unblended or blend them out very lightly if you think they look harsh you can do the same thing for the left eye you'll notice that I've done it already try to be careful when blending not to blur your eyelashes or any details that you want to keep sharp and crisp I don't know what happened but my right Iris does not look very circular let me just fix that using the tip of your sharpened pencil draw some eyelash Reflections along the top of your highlights these will look like U shapes or V shapes and back to shading I think I want the nose to look taller so I'll darken the shadow quite significantly along the left side of the nose you'll notice a small break here where my shading is much lighter that's to account for the bumpy part of your nose that kind of sticks out on either side you can achieve this by gradually lightening your pencil Strokes as you approach this Zone soften the edge here so the form turns away from the light more gradually making the nose look less blocky before we add highlights we want to make sure that our shading is not too light otherwise our highlights won't pop very much so look over your drawing to see if you can or want to shade it even darker I'm just going to slightly darken the rest of the nose and a little around the eye are you ready for some magic this is one of my favorite steps grab your eraser roll it to get a shape similar but smaller than the tip of your pinky finger we need a smooth rounded tip we'll use it to dab along the lightest section of the nose Bridge just use a light dabbing motion I'm lifting graphite to get a wavy shape like this dab more gently if you want to lift away less graphite and to achieve feathered out edges if at any point you erase too much go back in with your pencil very lightly building the graphite up with each passing layer and then gently blend it with your tissue the next spot to highlight is the area outside the inner corner of the eye use a pointier tip this time again just using a gentle dabbing or dragging motion sometimes it can take quite a few dabs to erase just the right amount of graphite you can also use a pointy kneaded eraser to lighten graphite in areas where you may have shaded too much for your liking while still preserving the smoothness of your shading think about this graphite removal process as lightening your drawing one pixel at a time if you're afraid of erasing too much remember that the lighter you dab the less graphite you'll remove so take your time let's add some highlights along the lower lash line mainly this area because it's facing the light most directly your highlights might look like white dots which is fine try to work between the hairs and make your dabbing pattern somewhat random and try not to overdo this a little goes a long way brighten your graphite near the outer corner of the eye to make it look like the skin is hugging the eyeball more just a few dabs in the inner corner of this eye can make the area look wet to make the eyeball look wet dab along the part where the eyeball touches the bottom eyelid your highlight will be most noticeable if you place it where the iris is because the contrast will be greater add some highlights along this part of the top lid because it's facing toward the direct light specifically this area try to work between the hairs and make your dabbing pattern somewhat random like white dots if your eye is looking more shapely but the brow bone looks pretty flat you can lighten the skin under the eyebrow arch to pull the brow out for the left eye the area of skin that's facing the direct light the most is probably here so let's go along the lower and upper eyelid to add some highlights there you can follow the wrinkle lines creating tiny rows of blob shapes if you want you can add a tiny highlight in the corner of the eye to give the eye a little twinkle I really hope you noticed a difference after adding those highlights if not here's a before and after to see just how much a small step can affect our drawing the highlights helped us lift the drawing off the page quite a bit helping the drawing look less flat okay take a step back from your work again how does it look any tweaks you'd like to make for example is the skin smooth enough I think I'm almost done check that your patterns of light and Shadow are consistent for example is the right side of the face lighter than the left side overall the very left side of my face is probably too light making the overall face seem kind of flat still so I'm going to darken it more I'm also darkening the eyebrows and their cast Shadows the irises some wrinkles below the right eye and I want to thicken the ambient light along this part of the nose to make the bridge look even more shapely alright I can tweak forever but I think I'm quite happy with how it turned out you can of course continue tweaking yours if you like it does help to take a break then come back in a few hours to look at your drawing with fresh eyes let's look at the process from beginning to end and see how far we've come if you found this tutorial helped you in any way I would really appreciate it if you hit the like button and if you want to see more videos like this please subscribe and let me know in the comments thank you very much for making it all the way to the end of this tutorial I hope you had fun drawing with me and are proud of the good work and effort that you put into this piece if you'd like to share your work with me please post it as a comment on my Pinterest page I would love to see all the different eyes that you guys have made links in the description enjoy the rest of your day and I hope to see you in the next video

Channel: RapidFireArt

Views: 414,643

Keywords: how to draw realistic eyes, how to draw realistic eyes for beginners, how to draw eyes, how to draw female eyes, how to draw beautiful eyes, realistic eye drawing, eyes drawing, narrated drawing tutorial, easy drawing tutorial, detailed drawing tutorial, drawing eyes from the 3/4 view, three quarter eye drawing tutorial, pencil drawing tutorial, realism drawing tutorial, how to shade eyes, how to draw eyes from scratch, easy, simple, how to draw eyebrows, how to draw eyelashes

Id: Jy4dEumd2fM

Length: 75min 10sec (4510 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 21 2023