How to Draw Eyes - Observing the Eye

How to Draw Eyes - Observing the Eye

When you learn to draw eyes, it is useful to think about the anatomy of the eye. Watch a friend's eyes as they look from side to side. You can see that the eyeball is not a perfect sphere. The cornea bulges out in front of the iris (the colored part), so that the while the iris looks flat, reflections from the front of the eye show a curved surface.

Note that when viewed from an angle, the pupil sits in the plane of the iris, and being in perspective is oval rather than circular.

The Eye Socket

anatomy of the face and eye

uncredited stock photo licensed to About.com, Inc.When drawing, look for the signs of underlying structure that the eye is placed within. Observe the bones and muscles of the face. Depending on a person's age and build, they may be more or less visible, bu they are still there. An awareness of the shape of the eye socket and the bands of muscle around the eye will help you identify and model changes of plane around the eye.

Observe the Eye in Detail

the eye in closeup

F. Priestly, licensed to About.comTo draw a realistic eye, it is important to observe it very closely.

Notice that the iris is not a solid tone, but has streaks of color, dark around the edge. Observe your subject carefully to identify the patterns of their iris, and note highlights and reflections on the surface of the eye, which alter their appearance.

At this angle, the inside rim of the lower eyelid is visible, and part of the upper. Often a broken line is used when drawing the lower eyelid, to indicate this lightness, or in a tonal drawing, there may be a highlight.

The 'whites' aren't really white. They have slight color and often visible blood vessels, and are frequently shadowed. Reserve pure white for highlights.

The Shape of the Eyes

C JewellWe often draw the eyes as symmetrical ovals, and think of them as being mirror images of each other. But as you know, the human face is not symmetrical, nor is the eye itself. Eye shapes vary a great deal, and the shape of the lids will change as the eye moves. When gazing to one side, they can change dramatically. Add a slight turn of the head or move your viewpoint from the center, and the eyes can look very different indeed.

Observing Expression

Stock Photo / H South, licensed to About.com, Inc.Expressions can drastically alter the shape of the eye. Pay attention to the planes, lines and wrinkles around the eye, not just the lids themselves, otherwise the eyes will just look mis-shapen. A smile pushes the muscles on the face upwards, making the lids bulge a little, sometimes making laugh-lines. Models practice an artificial smile that doesn't reach the eyes, but most subjects have smiles that affect their whole face.

Placement of the Eyes

H South/ DJ Jones, Licensed to About.com, Inc.Pay careful attention to placement of the eyes. If drawing without any aids, refer to the key 'landmarks' of the face, checking the angle and distance of the inner and outer points of the eyes in relation to the ears and nose. When you sketch a straight line through the eyes, base of the nose, mouth and brows, you'll find that they are in correct perspective or parallel.

When I begin drawing a portrait, I use construction lines to indicate the planes of the face, place the pupils and draw in main lines of the lids and brows. Including wrinkles and lines at this point can help provide reference points.

Drawing Eyes in Portraiture

H South, Licensed to About.com, Inc.When drawing a portrait, I don't usually get too detailed at first, but work up the whole face, adding further reference points and ensuring that everything fits together. Some people prefer to focus on a single area at a time.

Whichever approach you choose, careful observation is the key. Observing the tiny details of light and shade in the eyes will bring the subject to life. This is true whether you are doing a detailed portrait, or a quick sketch. Often, you may 'abbreviate' or suggest the details that you've observed, but the visual information that you've gathered will make your sketched 'abbreviations' accurate ones that make sense, so the drawing will be much stronger than when you've 8 of 8

Prev NextHow to Draw Eyes - Tips

H South, licensed to About.com, Inc.- Sometimes a little artist's license is needed if light is poor or when working from a photo. Adding a little curved highlight cutting across the pupil and iris, a shadow under the lid, or detail to the iris, can brighten flat eyes.

- Don't automatically outline the lower lid - often the lower rim is highlighted and needs to be lightly indicated.

- Draw the subtle changes in tone which indicate the eye socket, and the planes of the nose and brows, which help to sit the eyes into the face. If using line, you can use broken or implied line

only guessed at what it should look like.

Drawing the Mouth: Observation

courtesy P. RamakersWhen drawing any subject, your first step is to carefully observe. Forget what you 'know' and trust your eyes. So what might you see as you look at your subject's mouth?

In this 3/4 view, you can clearly see the effect of foreshortening on the curve of the lips, on the right of the photo the line of the mouth is almost parallel to the picture plane, while on the left it drops away, almost perpendicular to the picture plane. The amount of curvature depends, of course, on the individual, as well as their expression - some expressions pull the lips more tightly around the teeth.

Here you can see that there is very little change of plane between the edges of the lips and the skin - the lips curve in gradually - though it is a little sharper along the edge of the upper lip. (This can be more obvious in different light.) There is a slight crease below the lip, where the shadow drops off, before the outward curve of the chin begins to catch the light.

You can also see how the skin gradually begins to crease at the corners of the lips - sometimes this crease will create a quite obvious shadow.

Drawing the Mouth - Structure

H South from photo courtesy O. Chignolli, licensed to About.com, Inc.A common problem in drawing portraiture is misalignment of the nose, mouth and eyes. Avoid this by roughing in your structure first - notice that a line through the eyes, a line through the base of the nose, the line through the mouth, and a line through the chin, all project back to a vanishing point - front-on, these lines would be parallel; at an angle, they are (slightly) in perspective.

Drawing the Mouth: Building Tone and Form

H South, from photo courtesy Otaviano ChignolliThe subject of this photo has beautiful white teeth, but even the whitest teeth are shaded by the lips, so won't look totally white all over. The scan has darkened the white paper, but you can also see that the lower teeth and back teeth are quite shaded in this drawing. Reserve pure white paper for the very whitest areas of highlight in a photorealist drawing, and with a sketch, suggest some shading where appropriate.

The subject's shiny lipstick makes the lips more defined, but a slightly relaxed approach to the line,and use of shading on the face, keeps them from looking too sharp. The shine of the lipstick makes the highlights very crisp and white.

Note that the corners and inside of the mouth can be quite dark, depending on the fall of light - don't be afraid to draw it that way.

Drawing the Mouth in Ink: What Not to Do

H South, licensed to About.com, Inc.Outlining. Why is this a problem? With linear drawing, the line tends to indicate an edge - where two different planes meet. The edges of the mouth are not that defined, and if you were to paint them over with skin-colored makeup, you'd see that on many people, the change of plane can be very gradual. This can make heavily made-up lips particularly difficult to draw, as their neatly painted edges fight against the illusion of form that we are trying to create.

For most people, the color of the lips changes quite gradually, and we can also use a bit of artistic license. Outlining the lips, as in this example, makes them look oddly 'cut out' and not realistic at all.

Drawing the Mouth - Key Planes

H South, licensed to About.com, Inc.A useful approach to drawing the mouth is to simplify, and look for the shape of the two planes which together can give you a great deal of visual information about the shape of the mouth - the angled plane of the upper lip, and the shadow cast beneath the lower lip.

With just two deft strokes, the shape of the lips is established. The wash edges look crisp but are much lighter than a solid ink line, so they give definition without being as sharp as a drawn line.You can suggest the mouth with simple brush-strokes or smudges like this, or use these marks as aDrawing the Mouth - Ink Wash and Line

H South, licensed to About.comBuilding on the simple planes of the mouth shown in the previous step, a light wash is used to describe the shadows of the face. Study the whole area first so that you can apply the wash quickly, keeping it light and fresh, without fussy detail or overworking uncertain areas.

A few lines of black ink define the mouth. The upper and lower corners of the lips are not defined, as that area shows only a slight change of plane between the lips and skin. You would use similar lines for a pure line drawing.

foundation for a more finished drawing.

Anatomy of the Nose

Cartilages of the Nose

When you're drawing people, it helps to know what is going on under the skin. You don't need to remember the latin names, just so long as you remember roughly what goes where - what it looks like.

The shape of the nose varies enormously from person to person, because of their bone and cartilage structure, as well as the musculature of their face and the amount of fat under their skin. Its important to observe each individual carefully and study the shape of their nose and its position in relation to their other features.

Drawing Simplified Nose Structure

The nose can be simplified into a basic prism shape. This will be formed with its apex at the bridge of the nose, and its base across the widest part of the nostrils, tapering up to the tip. Try drawing this simple shape with the face at different angles. Note that in this example, the right side of the nose is longer than the left because of perspective. Drawing this simple prism first helps you to master the perspective element.

Drawing the Nose - Placing the Nose on the Face

To place the nose on the face, start by sketching the structure of the head. Observe the shape of the face, with its curved plane, which the nose sits into. Draw a line through the forehead and mouth to indicate the midpoint on the face. This will help you ensure that the features are aligned correctly.

Drawing the Nose - Shading the Form

Avoid outlining and use areas of light and shadow helps to create a three-dimensional effect. The use of directional shading - where your pencil marks follow the form - can accentuate this. Look for highlights and shadows. Note how in this drawing, the nose is quite rounded, so that there isn't a hard line along the nose - its shape is suggested by highlights, but it blends into the cheeks on each side.

Drawing the Nose - Line Drawing

In this line drawing, you can see how the rounded shape mentioned in the previous step is suggested by use of implied line. The line from the tip of the nose lifts off gradually then re-starts at the bridge of the nose, suggesting a soft edge but not outlining it. Sketchy cross-contour lines also hep to suggest the shape.

Drawing the Nose in Profile

When drawing the nose in profile, observe carefully and draw what you see, using other landmarks on the face as reference-points. For example, the nostril may line up with a corner of the nose, or the bump on the bridge will be level with the lower lid - depending on the angle of the face and the anatomy of your sitter. Try holding a pencil out between you and the subject - line it up vertically with a point on the face, and see what other points are perfectly above and below it. Be aware of depth - draw parts of the face that are closer more firmly, and allow the more distant parts to blend in behind them.

Proportions of the Human Head

Drawing the Structure of the Head and Face

To draw the human head accurately, first become familiar with the basic proportions. Traditional rules of proportion show the face divided into six equal squares, two by three. The upper horizontal division is roughly at the 'third eye' level mid-forehead, the lower at the base of the nose. The eyes sit on the horizontal centre, the mouth on the centre of the lower third.

If you are skeptical of such simple mathematics, try it out on some models in magazines - it works! While this is an ideal which does not account for racial and individual variation, observing these basic proportions gives you a starting point to measure against.

By ensuring your basic proprtions are correct to begin with, you will avoid major re-draws at a later stage of the drawing.

To construct a well-proportioned head, follow these simple steps.

Begin with a ball.

Drop a line from mid-forehead to the chin. 'Slice off' a circle at the side of the head, and from the front of this circle, curve a line down to the chin. Complete the plane of the face with a line on the other side. Now add the jawline.

Construct the nose, indicate mouth and chin position and elongate skull slightly. (The distance from chin to crown is almost the same as from forehead to the back of the skull).

For an in-depth explanation of this method, see Ron Lemen's excellent tutorial.

It's important that you take the time to walk through and complete the Understanding 3D Form tutorial before you're ready to take this next step. Anyone who thinks they are beyond the basics presented there is kidding themselves, myself included. No matter how good you may be, if you dont get the basics it will come back to bite you.

Step 1. This is the biggy. This step dictates the entire head drawing, and or pose for that matter if you are attaching an entire body to this. Start with a sphere, freehand will do, so long as it reads as a ball. You are going to divide the sphere into halves, then fourths. There will be 8 sections total. Think of this as a 3D sphere, which you should do anyway, because what you draw will ultimately be 3 dimensional. Once the sphere has been evenly divided you are going to find the golden cross section that dictates and determines the size, shape, tilt, character, and proportions of the head to be drawn. The cross section determines where the brow line begins, and divides our face plane in half with a centerline. These divisions also help determine where the ear will sit on the side of the head. Amazing how it all comes down to a simple cross section, isnt it?The centerline of the face is derived from our cross section. This centerline is drawn next. Note that the centerline of the head doesnt follow the form of the sphere once we have established the cross section. Why? Because, the chin extends away from the sphere shape. If our chin was a part of this sphere, we would have a pretty darn round face. It doesnt have to be any particular length at this point, it is only there to establish the two main divisions of the head, or divides the head into an even left and right half. With a minimal degree of shifting of one feature or another, all faces are fairly symmetrical. I say minimal degree of shifting of features, meaning not everyones eyes are perfectly even across the face laterally, not everyones ears are laterally even, etc. Lyle Lovett for example, really asymmetrical. But his face still is evenly divided, and it has all the components required to call it a head.

Once you know the tilt, have found the cross section, and laid in the centerline of the head, your next step is to shave to two side of our sphere on either side of the cross section. This will help you begin forming the side planes of the head. Why shave them? Well, the skull isnt actually round like a ball, but flattened on all sides with a fairly round top for the skullcap. Keeping those round side planes would actually be deceiving, and the skull drawn would end up a little too wide, awkward looking, and the ears would be mounted on these little tiny ends, with no real cohesive attachment to the whole

Step 2-Now that you have the cross section established, the next thing you will do is divide the head into thirds. This is the golden division you will use to lay all of the feature elements of the skull upon, i.e., the eyes, nose lips, ears, and so on The primary, or stock look for the average human is even divisions between these thirds. But once understood, these divisions will be your guide to drawing charactures, character types for stories, or whatever. These divisions are as important as the golden cross section that began all this. The upper third is what you start with. This establishes the divisional units of the skull, i.e. it creates the volume to which the other 2/3rds will be measured. The upper 1/3rd is from the hairline to the brow line. The 2nd division establishes the location for the nose, ears, and eyes. Remember, when you find the nose, you have also found the ears. They follow the top of the nose, or brow ridge, and the bottom of the nose division evenly with just about everyone. Knowing this will help you. I see many drawings and paintings where the ears look like they were pasted on to the skull after the fact because of little or no understanding of proper proportion, or placement were privy. The middle divisions go between the top of the brow, to the base, or bottom of the nose. The lower 3rd sets up where your mouth goes, and finishes the skull with locating the bottom of the chin. Thus, this lower 3rd goes from the bottom of the nose to the bottom of the chin. These divisions of thirds wrap entirely around the skull. These divisions remain evenly proportioned no matter what the tilt of the head is. So if the head is looking straight up, all the divisions will be shrunk down to little segments, but still even in their division. This is soooo important in placing all the features on the head. The side division of the head helps place the ear in its correct position, to the left of the vertical division line for the right ear, and to the right of the vert line on the left side of the head. This vertical division also tells you where the jaw begins, since it attaches to the skull just in front of the ears.When it is all said and done, and this golden division of thirds is well understood, and heavily practiced to the point of intuitive understanding, the rules of proper thirds can be broken. This is where character types are created. They dont necessarily follow proper spacing and placing, but rather take on their own divisions. This is valuable information for spacing and placing the features on the face. I cant stress this stuff enough. I see many a drawing and painting that just didnt quite work because these basic principals werent known. Remember it well, and you will always draw a properly divided, and proportioned head, or head attached to a body in a figure drawing.

Step 3-Here I basically summed up what it all means when it is said and done. This head took about 3 minutes to draw because I know the principals of drawing a well done head, and I practiced them repeatedly for years and years. I also had an idea of what I was after for a finish. This guy could easily be refined many times over, but I am not bashing or critiquing, merely demonstrating what a good understanding of the basics can get you. Here are a couple pages of head drawings I have accumulated from a number of my sketchbooks.

Here is an assignment if you so choose. If you do this assignment, DONT DO ONE DRAWING AND CALL IT FINISHED. You shoud draw entire pages of at least a dozen drawings on the page. Repetition is the KEY to successful drawing, cant stress that enough. Come to my studio some time and I will show you the dozens upon dozens of pads filled front to back of studies. Good, Bad, Horrid, Eye Wrenching, etc. but done no less. Mileage is the hamburger helper of the basic principals, trust me. Doing a hundred heads before understanding how they work is great, so long as by the time you have done them all, you understand volume and proportion to a logical degree. Drawing the heads repeatedly over and over again is boring to only those who refuse to learn, interesting to those who are curious, and fascinating to those who need to know.

So the assignment is to do dozens of these wire frames, attach the chin, find the ear and the nose, like the one in step two. Different tilts, and different angles. I want to see proper division. No guess work, you have the rules in front of you, follow them closely, and I guarantee you next time you draw some figure in a scene or in a pose of some sort, that head is going to look well constructed from a proportion stand point, because you took the time to learn those principals of head division and will never stop using them until you stop producing art I hope this helps you out a bit. Good luck and enjoy. Ron LemenRecomened Books

Andrew Loomis-Figure Drawing for all its worthAndrew Loomis-Creative IllustrationAndrew Loomis-Fun with the PencilAndrew Loomis-Drawing the Head and HandsAndrew Loomis-Successful Drawing

AnatomyBridgeman's Complete Guide to Drawing from LifeStephen Peck-Atlas of Human Anatomy for the ArtistJohn Vanderpoel-The Human FigureFritz Schider-An Atlas of Anatomy For Artists

PerspectiveDora Miriam Norton-Freehand Perspective and SketchingArthur Guptill-Sketching as a HobbyGuptill-Sketching and Rendering in PencilErnest Watson-Creative Perspective for Artists and Illustrators

The Famous Artists Courses from the Fifties to the early 1970's

I would tend to stray away from the Hogarth books, only because what he does is purely inventive, not using real models or anything for his basis of structure. As a result, his images tend to be a bit too sinuey, rubber like, and just not quite right. Bridgeman though is a bible that no artist should be without.