DRAWING AN EYE

1. INTRODUCTION: Hi, my name is Geeta. I am an artist and mentor. I paint with a variety of media and subjects, and my specialty is painting portraits. Some of my most loved commissions include portraits made using acrylics, oil paints and pencil sketches, as well as large realistic landscapes. I have created several paintings of gods and goddesses revered in Hindu culture, one of which is a wall sized oil painting of Goddess Lakshmi. My paintings are available for viewing on my website Getarea.com and on my Instagram Getarea underscore art studio, I've showcased some interesting videos of my paintings on my Youtube channel, Getarea Art Studio. My paintings and designs are available worldwide purchase via popular companies such as Fine Art America and Red Bubble. You can visit my Pixels or Red Bubble site and order high quality art prints and tastefully crafted merchandise created out of my paintings. My paintings are evocative, dreamy, bright and colorful. And viewers often tell me they are mesmerized with the beauty of my paintings. Which is why you will see that the art, prints and merchandise created out of my paintings are unique and worth collecting and gifting to dear ones, including yourself. I sell most of my paintings directly. You can get in touch via Instagram. Or if you want to buy my paintings or order a commission portrait, you can even deem me directly via my website. In this course, I will teach you how to intuitively understand and draw a beautiful human eye. Most of my students ask me to teach them to draw eyes. And I realize that it's a fascinating subject for a lot of people. I know it was for me to draw anything beautifully. It is important to understand the subject first. I believe that when we observe and understand our subject, we, we develop intuitive knowledge of it. Which comes in handy when we try to create a drawing or painting of our subject. This is why I will begin my course with an understanding of the structure of the human eye. In a very simple short video, I will then show you how to translate this understanding and knowledge into a beautiful pencil sketch complete with shading and details. Then I will take you through six simple steps to creating a beautiful eye with soft pastels and pencils, which will be our main project for this course. At the end of my course, I have a bonus video where you will learn the process of creating a strikingly beautiful abstract eye painting with plain, simple watercolor brush bins in 9 minutes flat. I promise you a wonderful journey of discoveries and Aha moments. As you go through my videos, my course is full of tips and tricks that I learned and perfected over decades of my art journey. I hope learning these tips and tricks will bring you immense joy and help you create beautiful, stunning eyes. Please do not forget to upload your completed project paintings to the project section. I would love to see your work. Let's begin. 2. STRUCTURE OF THE HUMAN EYE: The structure of the human eye is pretty simple. It's an eyeball which is spherical in shape. It has a round iris in the middle, which is the colored portion of the eye. The color varies according to race, ethnicities, and multiple factors. In the middle of the iris, we have the pupil which is the darkest portion of the eye. This is the area where the light enters. The eyeball is protected by two flaps of skin which arch over and above it and below it. Both these flaps of skin close when the eyes are closed. They closed or they flap open. These eye lids have something called the lash line, which is where the eyelashes originate. The eyelashes help to keep the dust away from the eyes and also make the eyes look beautiful. Now this is slightly thicker visible. There is an upper crease on the top eyelid. The crease on the lower eyelid is typically not visible because of the position of the eye. Here I have drawn two extra lines for each lash line, the upper one and the lower one. I have colored it in to denote the thickness of the eyelids and also to mark out the area from where the eye lashes cut. This is the simplest structure of the human eye. Of course, we won't always need to draw all of this. And we can go straight to directly creating the upper lash line first and then the iris. In my next video, I'm going to show you how to translate what we've just learned about the structure of the human eye into an actual realistic pencil sketch of the human eye, complete with shading and details. Head on to the next video and watch the process now. 3. TRANSLATING KNOWLEDGE TO A PRACTICAL SKETCH: In the previous video, we had learned about the structure of the human eye. In this one, we're going to translate that knowledge into a practical pencil sketch. I start with making a round eyeball. And I draw a line through the lower part of the eyeball. This is mainly to get an orientation of the slant of the eye. And then I go ahead and create the iris. At this point, I'm really not worried about any mistakes because I'm just going to cover it up during the shading stage. So I just keep going on with my sketch without using any erasers as such. Let's make the pupil now and color it in. And I mark out the two points where the ends of the eye will be. And I proceed to create the tear duct. The tear duct kind of audience the whole eyes. So I've just made it a little above this line so that the lower lash line falls in a little straighter since it's a little less curvy are usually than the upper lash line. So I proceed to make the lash line. Now. I connect it to the end that I had pointed. And then I go ahead with the lower lash line and I create the extra lines to depict the thickness of the eyelids. And then I go ahead and mark out the areas for the quiz that will fall on the upper eyelid. Once I mark the areas, it becomes a lot more easier to draw it in. And now I'm just going to shade in the iris. I start with shading the top portion of the iris a little darker. And then I proceed to create the highlights in the little square box shapes. I'm using a dove and drawing pencil. It's an black pencil. It comes with a dove and drawing pencil set. This set is known for its wonderful thickness of the LED and the softness is amazing. It comes really, really dark on the paper. And that kind of helps us because we don't need to add in too many layers when we are working with this particular pencil. Having said that, I'm using an edges sheet, which is, which is Refer in grained compared to normal sketch paper. So I think that also kind, kind of adds to the texturing effect which we are seeing here. I'll be adding a semicircular shape in the middle of the iris and the pupil. Because that kind of makes it look very realistic, even if you don't go into too much detail. I'll just go ahead and shade the upper lash line. In fact, to be more precise, the outer lash lines. These kind of helped me to decide where the shading happens. I'll also darken the pleas of the upper upper eyelid. I just darken the top lash line a little bit more and curve it out towards the edge, outer edge of the eye. And I proceed to shade in those areas of the eye, which are usually typically a little hidden inside shadows. And the areas that typically protrude a little bit, those get more light. So I'm not going to shape those in as heavily. Is a good time to kind of Use the shape of the eyeball as a guide for texturing and shading. Some areas will have slightly less depth. Those are lighter, and some will have a little bit more depth. That also of course, depends on the age of the person who's your triangle. But in this case it's a slightly random one. So I'm going for something like a middle aged. And then I proceed to draw the blue line. The blue line typically starts at an angle to the tear duct and ends at an angle to the outer edge of the eye. I'll show that with lines towards the end of the video. Let's proceed to shade in a little bit more, create some interesting highlights and depths. She'd inside the eye. The fact that we now know as the sclera. Now I'm switching fences. I'll be using a slightly more precise prismacolor, black colored pencil. This is also a soft core pencil and it's very good for detailing. Since I can create eyelashes wave vector with this one. Then the slightly thicker core pencil, which is the dove and one. Here we go with the eyelashes. I'm trying to get the eyelashes to come out of the lash line in an uptick sort of way if you see something like the Nike logo, but not quite like that. So the shape of the eyeball determines the shape of the eyelashes. Now, I'm trying to show the curvature of the eye. By the way, the eyelashes are curving outwards. At the, at the end of the eyes, the eyelashes go outwards. And to submit it go slightly straight. And that's the same even with the lower lash line. Here to the lower eyelashes. As you see. A slightly smaller to a city a duct and slightly longer towards the Altria and at the eye. And in the middle they kind of straighten. But overall, the eyelashes simply show the curvature of the eye in an even more pronounced way. And now I'll proceed to shade in the, I grow. I don't want to go into too much detail into the structure of the agro in this particular video because I'm going to cover it in great detail in the next ones. I'm actually going to show you exactly how to draw these two lines of defense, the beginning and the end of the eyebrow and also mark out the distance of the eye from the group. This is a very difficult sort of I and II broke out. The distance between the eye and the eye. Sees a whole lot about your drawing. In the next set of videos, we will build upon the knowledge that we have gotten so far and create a more vivid and striking I complete with beautiful eyelashes and yes, a little hint of makeup with soft pasted and color pencils. Head onto the next video and watch the process now 4. MATERIALS: In this video, I'm showing the materials I'm using for my course starting with the breaststroke drawing paper. It's an A4 size paper to have a GSM, rostral artist, soft pastels, what each shades. The Sakura Gelly Roll pen, size ten. Mechanical pencil. The dove and drawing, coloring pencils. Set of six, which have mostly warm shades. And become Lynn cocoa, you artist freshmen, set of twins 5. STEP 1 GETTING A FEEL THE OUTLINES: Now in six easy-to-follow and really, really FUN steps, we're going to create a strikingly beautiful eye. As I have said before. I believe in intuitively connecting to whatever I'm creating. And I feel that kind of gives a lot of life, a lot of energy to your painting. So try and go intuitively with whatever knowledge is there inside you about the structure form and the, and the details of whatever you're trying to draw. This was the whole purpose of me teaching you about the structure of the human eye first. And then taking you through a sequence of steps to convert that structure into an actual pencil sketch. And now we're going to go intuitive and start by just creating the lash line and the general outline of the eye. Trusting the intuitive understanding we have of the structure of the human eye. I'm also going ahead and drawing the eyebrow here. And for that, I start with accurate positioning, for which I use the lower hairline of the eye for you. As you can see, it starts at a slight angle from the tear duct. And I leave enough space between the eye and the eyebrow so that it looks attractive and beautiful. Then I go ahead and fill in each hair in the direction of the general slope of the skull. If you notice the hairs at the outer tips of the eyebrows are both pointing in different directions. So the hairs that are in line with the tear duct, they stand a little out and of street. And then the hairs proceed to fall and lie down in the direction of the slope of the skull. And then there's an arch of the eyebrow where the slope for the downwards following the arch of the eyebrow or the slope of the skull again. Now there we draw the lower and upper hair lines, that smaller hairs, because here we generally have smaller hairs. The longer hairs are typically there in the middle of the eyebrow. This is a general structure of the eyebrow. I always like to highlight the areas that are lit up and create shadows in the areas where there's more of depth or a little bit of darkness. And I do this right at the first stage of my drawing so that I know what I'm working with. The lights are where the shadows up. Now, I sat with highlighting the areas where there's maximum light, which is the highlight. And then I proceed to fill in the lower are the deeper areas where the light doesn't reach. And that is where I'm creating all the shadows. The next step is creating the base layers for the iris. This, this step is what will give us the depth that we need to create a life-like iris for the eye. Let's hit onto the next video and find out how that works. 6. STEP 2 BASE LAYERS IRIS: In the previous step, we had covered the areas where the lights and shadows are. Having done that, my next step is to create a base. For that. I'll be starting by filling in base layer, which is medium tool, which will either be too dark, know the highlight. The medium tone here is going to be an early Brown for me because I've chosen to create a brown iris for my eye. And then I'm going to go ahead and fill this medium tone in. This one is in the yellow ocher. And the pencil I'm using here is a dove into pencil. There's a Durbin drawing pencil to be specific, dove and has a whole range of pencils. But my favorite ones are the light fast and the Durbin drawing pencils. Darwin drawing pencils are very creamy, smooth and rich in pigment and the lay down on the paper. Really satisfied. Once I've completed the mid tones, I'll go ahead and fill in the slightly darker areas and outline the highlights of the eye. And then I'll go ahead and start coloring in other details of the iris. The top part of the iris, where it touches the eyelid, is where the shadow of the eyelid folds on it. So that is the area we're going to darken up a little bit. This is also the part where we have light shining into the eye. So I'm going to create the highlights there as well. Then I go ahead and darken up the outline of the iris. So I've heard that the outlines of the iris is thicker in younger people and thinner as we as we age. So older people have a slightly thinner outline. The lower part of the aisles typically lighter since it attaches more light. So we're going to leave the lower part with just the middle tones and maybe darken up the middle tones a little bit there. And this will help us create whichever of the iris. I'm filling in the middle portion of the eye with a rich chocolate brown so that that Rican create slightly lighter tones or more details on it as we go into the next couple of layers later. Now that we've finished the base layers for the iris, Let's do the same and create a base layers for the eyelids and the sclera. Let's hit onto the next video and see how we can do that. 7. STEP 3 BASE LAYERS EYELIDS AND SCLERA: In this step, we will cover the base layers of the eyelids and sclera. I'll start with the upper lash line. And I'm going to add a little bit of makeup to the eye to make it a little more attractive. And that is the reason why I'm creating a dark line on the upper line of the lash line that we created. Notice that there are two lines and the lower one and the upper one show the fold of the skin for the eyelid. Also its thickness. And it's between these two lines that the eyelashes will form. Now, the top line is where any makeup would go and that's where I'm going to create the darkest part of the light. We also darken the crease of the upper eyelid, darken up a little bit. The tear duct and the lower lash line. Recreate the lash line if you need to and fill it up. I'm filling the white portion of the eye. Also call this sclera with a slightly blue tinge. And I'm using soft pastels for this step. The paper I'm using has a slightly rough texture. So soft pastels go over it really well. And then I can blend and create layers. So I would like the eye to have a fresh look, which is why I'm creating a blue tinge on the sclera. As we go. I will progressively lighten this up and create the curvature of the eyeball by showcasing light in the middle area. Using a delve into you drawing right pencil for this, it's the Chinese white pencil. I'm using a salmon colored soft pasted to color in the area of the lash line. And then I lightened it duct with the white pencil. Now I'm going to add a little white to the sclera to create more highlights. Adding white the sclera to lighten it up progressively. The layers than a one on top of the other and create depth under the highlights, which is why I'm going to work on this portion with a lot of layers. I'll settle all the whites with an ear bud and just shake the paper to let go of all the excess cramps. I shade inside the sclera around the edges to create more shadows for of the upper and lower lashes so that it highlights the curvature of the eye a little bit more. And then I lighten up the memory portion with white. I add pink lines to represent the winds that are visible in the sclera. These wins supply blood to the eye, and they are usually visible, do not very glaringly. So this week complete the base layers of these sclera and the eyelids. In our next video, we're going to work on the details for the iris sclera and the tear duct. Let's hit onto the next video. 8. STEP 4 DETAILING THE IRIS, SCLERA, AND TEAR DUCT Made with Clipchamp: In this step, we're going to detail the iris, the sclera and tear duct. So I'll start with the iris. And I will start adding mid tones and warmer hues to the iris area in the middle, specifically where the bottom layer which we added was dark, if you remember. And that's going to shine through these lighter layers like a glaze, creating an effect of depth. And as we lighten up this part of the eye, we will progressively do it in layers. So we'll add a slightly darker layer first and then a lighter color on top of it. After adding the mid tones, I use the dark chocolate drawing pencil of Darwin's. And I use it to create slightly darker shades in the form of lines in between all those highlights in the middle portion of the eye extending right out to the edges of the iris. And with these, what I do is that I highlight the lighter areas that I have just created. I make shapes out of those using this darker pencil. These shapes will resemble the patterns that you normally see inside and iris when you look at it, up-close, alcove all these lines a little bit to showcase the curvature of the iris as well. Working on the tear duct is very easy. We just use pink color which has got a tint of red in its that it resembles the actual tear duct. And then we settled the color in with a slightly lighter shade of pink and add white highlights to it. I had a little bit more of the colors that I feel I needed. One is the thing in the sclera and then a little bit of yellow to highlight the Lord area of the iris. I use brown to outline these highlighted areas. Now I use the Sakura Gelly Roll pen. It's a one-point zero tip, and I use it to deepen the highlights inside the iris. I'll use the same technique to create highlights in the rest of the sclera and tear duct. Always keep in mind the curvature of the eye so that the light and the shadows that you make follow that curvature. That's what creates a realistic feel. I've TIN lines right inside the lower lash line as this creates a realistic effect of the eyes being DUE and moist. And lastly, I'll create highlights inside the tear duct to enhance the effect of moisture in the eye. In the next step, we're going to create the details of the skin around the eye. And this is an interesting step where we can add a little bit of glitter and various eye shadows. It's a truffle makeup and beautiful effects. So let's move on to the next video and see how we can create the skin details around the eye 9. STEP 5 LAYERING THE SKIN TONES Made with Clipchamp: To begin layering the skin tones around the eye, we start with the basic skin tone of a light. When he lost sight of color. And I've done this all around the eye already. And now I'm proceeding to add a little bit of magenta to the outer end of the crease of the upper eyelid. Now add magenta to the area, the other tear duct of the upper eyelid. And then we can actually add a slightly lighter color in the middle area of the crease of the upper eyelid. And then we can blend it all slightly. We can do a sort of slot soft blending. You tap the colors in. Then we can dark in the outer area of the eyelid again. Maybe awhile. It color. Depends on what kind of eye color or eye shadow you would like to use. You can also go for a set of peacock blues or grays, whichever colors you fancy. Blending with your fingers kind of mixes all of the colours into a very soft shades. So in that case, you wouldn't be able to actually distinguish between dark and light areas very starkly, which is what I'm going for right now. And then I proceed to add highlights with the white color. I'm going for a glittery look for the upper eyelid crease. And that's why I'm going to add this white in slight dots and very tiny lines in the entire upper eyelid crease area. Now over the areas that we have already marked out as shadows and light areas, I'll use dark and light skin tones using soft pastels to create the first layers of the skin. Soft pastels have an amazing blending capability and they couldn't give you the look and feel of a very smooth finish. And that's the look I'm going for in this case. So I'm going to layer in the shadows and highlights as needed with slightly darker and lighter colors. And keep blending as I go and shake off all the extra dust from the paper that I'm left with, only the colors and the layers that I need. Also go ahead and add the light skin tones to the area above the Bro so that I have the skin settled in there and outline the last details which include the lashes and the eyebrow hair. I won't need to go, but the skin tones after I do those, so that will be the last step of painting. Use the pigment of the soft faced judiciously and try not to waste too much of it. I have blended it all under the law, eyelashes now adding a little bit of pink makeup to the lower lash line. Although we'll just see how the effect is later and maybe darken it up a little bit to get a smoky eye. Look later. If we want to go for that, for now, this looks good. We'll go ahead and blend it all. A little bit of violet right under the lash line towards the outer end of the eye to match with the upper eyelid. And I proceed to lighten up the area around that makeup, but that the eye looks great. I don't want any buggy eyes are dark circles for this one. There's some areas around the eye reach catch a little bit more light, such as the tip outside the tear duct right under it. So that's where I'm going to use white to add a little bit more of Highlight. Go on adding colors as you wish and try and create a blended effect around the eye. Keeping in mind the skin tones and the makeup distinctions. Typically a little bit of shading right under the lash line for the lower lash creates a very good realistic effect. And then you can lighten up the area right under that, a little bit of white. This brings us to the end of this step. In the next video, we will work on the last step towards creating a beautiful striking eye, which is detailing the eyelashes and the hair in the Bros. so let's move on to the next video. And this is probably going to be the most satisfying part of completing this wonderful sketch. 10. STEP 6 DEFINING EYELASHES AND THE EYEBROW Made with Clipchamp: The eyelashes, the final and most defining part of the eye, which a showcase the curvature of the eye and the direction in which the eye is focused on looking at. To that end, the eyelashes appear to find in a certain direction. So how we're going to show that is we're going to create the eyelashes in particular order. The smallest and the thinnest eyelashes will appear near the tear ducts. The longest and the thickest eyelashes will appear towards the outer end of the eye. And in the middle, eyelashes will gradually keep growing in length and thickness. Now towards the middle of the eye, where the curvature actually is the most visible. Here, the eyelashes will point outwards and upwards, almost straight towards the tear duct where the eye is curved in. The eyelashes will point towards the left, both on the upper side and the lower side. Towards the outer end of the eye, where the eyelashes are curved outwards from the eye, they will point in a slightly right direction, both upwards and downwards from the lash lines. For the first level of creating the eyelashes, I'm focused only on finding out where each hair is going to be and what its size and position is like. And that's why I'm using a mechanical pencil to create this first level of the eyelashes. I'm not going to thicken it up in any way that comes later. Using a mechanical pencil also helps us to show the base of each lash inside the lash line. When we use a thicker pencil, this base kind of blends in with the lash lines. So instead of doing that, we're going to use only the mechanical pencil for the base of each eyelash. And then later, as we use a darker pencil to take an each eyelash will thicken it only towards the middle and the tip of each eyelash. When I use the dark pencil in some areas, I actually go into the lash line and thicken it up right from the base just to create a more dramatic effect. This can be avoided, as I mentioned before. But if you feel like creating really dramatic eyes, some places, you can go ahead and get into the lash line, but tear duct pencils. Now we start working on the eyebrows. I start from the from the area near the tear duct, which is the front portion of the eyebrow. And this area typically has longer hair, but the hair is also a little sparse in this area. As an you've got less hair in this area. The directions that the hair grows in is what I'm trying to depict here with a dark brown pencil. I'm using a dark brown pencil for my first layer of the hair in the eyebrow so that I can create slightly darker shade later on and still have some areas of slightly Lighter hair, because that creates a more realistic effect. As I work on the lower hairline of the eyebrow, I show the exact direction in which the hair is growing in the eyebrow. And then I proceed to create the upper line of the upper hairline, we call it. And in that, I'm going to showcase the direction in which the hair grows down from the upper hairline. And then we're going to fill it in with short and long, as I mentioned before. In the middle of the eyebrow, the hair is quite long, whereas it's slightly shorter towards both ends. The hair grows downwards from the upper hairline and upwards from the lower hairline, which is what we are showing here. And they both meet in the middle of the eyebrow to create a dense thick area of hair in the middle and at the curve or the arch of the eyebrow. The lower hairline is use more importance because the hair grows upwards and outwards in a code. Now I proceed to draw the same kind of strokes with a darker pencil. I have the option of leaving some of the lighter areas as they have to create a realistic effect. To wrap it up, I create a few highlights around the eye with the Sakura Gelly Roll pen and a hint of dark black under the lower eyelash towards the outer edge of the eye to complete the smoky eye effect. And that's it. We're done and we have created a wonderful, striking, beautiful eye. In the next video, I have a bonus lesson for you, in which I show you step-by-step how to create a beautiful and striking abstract eye painting with watercolor brush pens. You can always use watercolors instead of brush pens, since the techniques are pretty much the same. But this is going to be a lot of PFK-1, so don't miss it. Go ahead and watch the next video. Now 11. A LITTLE SOMETHING EXTRA ABSTRACT EYE: Watercolor brush pens are a great and fund medium to use. They use ink instead of water, and the ink comes out really intense. You can always dilute it with water, much the same you would do with actual watercolors. So watercolors and brush pens are quite interchangeable. However, I just feel that Watercolor brush pens have more vibrant when it comes to colors. And they also give you a greater degree of control. However, they tend to dry it really fast compared to watercolors. And the ink is pretty intense. So you might need to keep a wet brush handy for whenever you want to dilute the ink immediately. The technique of drawing out this eye is very similar to what we have already learned so far in our course. So it's not going to be a challenge for you. And you can just go ahead and straight away, make all the lines that define the outline of the eye the same way we did for our previous exercises. And then we can go ahead and start coloring it all in with the brush pens. Use the colors that we can find an asset that are closest to the colours that we need. For example, I'm using a slightly orangeish yellow for the outline of the eye and the lash lines. And I'm going to use a blue colors for the iris since I have light and dark blue in my set of brush pens. Feel free to pause the video as needed so that you can get a better understanding of each and every step as I'm doing good. As you can see, I wet my brush at intervals and then use the brush pen to add little dots or lines of color. And these slowly leach into the wet area, which is the whole principle of watercolors. So you can experiment with many different patterns here and don't feel restricted in any way. If you feel like being created, please go ahead. This brings us to the end of our course. I hope you had a lot of PFK-1 creating these beautiful eyes right along with me. And I hope that you have understood the structure of the eye so that you can always intuitively draw it and enjoy that process as much as I do. You can always come back to this course and look at techniques again and see if you missed something. And also, I hope you will be able to upload the eyes that you did create to the project area of my course so that I can take a look at your project and I can like and comment on them and provide guidance if at all it is needed. In the meantime, take care, stay safe, and have lots of PFK-1. And I'll catch up with two in my next Skillshare course.