Hello artists! I hope you’re doing great and playing around with your pencils and paper, learning new things.
I’m back with the third tutorial on drawing eyes from different angles.In the previous tutorials, we covered how to draw eyes for complete beginners and the basic anatomy of an eye to help you draw more realistic eyes.
But those were about drawing eyes from only one angle. So now, it’s time to draw eyes from different angles and enhance our expertise in drawing beautiful eyes!
The Form of an Eye:
Before we jump into drawing eyes from different angles, it’s better to understand their form a little.
Eyes are not flat surfaces but rather spherical forms that fit into a hollow space called the eye socket.
Two pieces of skin, known as eyelids, cover and protect the eye. Because of this, we can only see it partially.
The iris, or the colored part of the eye, is a full circle only from the front view and changes shape depending on the angle, gaze, or perspective. It takes up most of the space on the sclera (the white part).
Eyelashes come in various sizes and densities, curling up or pointing straight. They wrap around the eyeball, so their appearance changes when observed from different angles.
Eyebrows sit on the upper edge of the eye socket and usually follow the bone structure. They grow in different directions and vary in thickness.
Now that you have a better understanding of the form, let’s move on to the fun part!
Drawing Tools You’ll Need:
- H pencil: For drawing guiding lines
- 2B pencil: For detailing
- 4B pencil: For darker values
- Eraser
- Sharpener
- Paper (any paper will work)
- Ruler (optional)
Draw the Eye from the Front View:
As a general rule of thumb, I like to divide the parts of the eye into sections to help you understand its general structure — especially if you’re drawing freehand without any reference.
- The big, squarish form represents the eye socket.
- The three lines represent the eyelid, lash line, and the middle of the eye.
- The upper curve represents the eyebrow.
- The side line represents the endpoint of the eyelid and the lash line.
- In the front view, I divided the upper lashline into 3 planes and the lower one into 2 planes, just to simplify them even further.
let’s put this into practice.
Step 1: Draw the guidelines
Use an H pencil. Draw the square.
Cut it in half horizontally and vertically!
Draw two straight horizontal lines in the upper and lower halves of the square.
Mark a side line where you’re gonna end your eyelid.
Step 2: Draw planes
The next step is to draw planes for the upper and lower eyelids.
The upper eyelid is divided into three planes while the lower eyelid has two planes.
Step 3: Draw the Iris
Draw a full circle in the middle for the iris. As we’re working with the front view so Iris is gonna be a full circle at this point.
Step 4: Draw the eyefold
Draw the eye fold right on top of the circle that you drew for the iris where it touches the third line.
Step 5: Darken the lines
Now the hard part is already done. You have your guiding lines ready and it’s time to give these lines a little dynamic shape.
Use a 2B pencil to draw over lines and darken them a little.
Step 6: Remove the guiding lines
Guiding lines have fulfilled their purpose at this point so it’s better to remove them to get a clean outline of the eye. Remove all lines other than those you’ve darkened before.
Don’t forget to draw the trajectory of the eyebrows before removing the guiding lines.
Step 7: Draw the eyelashes
Use a 4B pencil to draw eyelashes.
Here are some tips to draw eyelashes:
They are not of equal length so draw them randomly.
Group them together.
Draw them in different directions.
Step 8: Draw the eyebrow
Last but not least, drawing eyebrows can be very difficult if not done properly.
The picture above shows the exact directions of the hair that grows on the eyebrow. Repeat it to get a relatively thick eyebrow. Remember, the eyebrow is always thick from the middle so go easy on the ends.
Draw the eye from 3/4 view:
Draw the eye from profile view:
So this is it! Now you know how to draw eyes from different angles, Freehand, but these rules still apply if you want to draw from references. You just need to tweak those lines according to the reference as people have vastly different eyes.
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See you soon!
