How to Draw an Eye - Simple and Fast

1. Intro: Hi. How's it going today? We're gonna go over how to draw a realistic I This has made four beginners, so it's gonna be step by step. I'm a professional illustrator. I've been working for the last 20 years, and I'm gonna go over this stuff so that you can understand you can get is good at it as fast as possible. So I'm gonna go with the tools that you need. I'm gonna go for the parts of the I. Then I'm gonna go through the shading of the I that I'm gonna do a demonstration for you. And lastly, and most importantly, I'm gonna tell you what you need to do in order for you to get as good at this stuff as quickly as you can. So we're gonna go through all of that very quickly, very efficiently. If that sounds good to you, you're gonna have a great, great time. Let's get started right now. 2. Supplies: So let's go the tools really fast. So, General, if you never drawn before, we don't tend to drawn with those number two pencils that you have at school. We tend drug with artist pencils, and the artist pencils tend to come in to variety packs. One would be two packs in general, one would be the hard and the soft, so the other, because soft, so hard, graphite pencils, hard graphite pencils are more for buildings. Drawing buildings and architecture on soft like these are more for drawing faces, things that little bit of organic eso. What you want to get for faces would be, you know, eyes and faces anything like that. Get the graphite, the soft, graphite soft. This is actually Derwent brand, but there are several brands you can get. You could get a favorite Castell. You get whatever you want. But just the most important thing is get graphite soft pencils. They never like having a racer at the end. I don't know why artist pencils do that. Um, you can actually use the eraser on the end of a very typical of mechanical pencil if you really don't really want to go out and buy one. Otherwise, I like using this. This is a kneaded eraser on. This is my favorite, Castel. These they haven't also in every art store that you want is a fresh one. I'm gonna open up right now. You can get these anywhere. I've seen them in Target and Walmart even eso. The coolest thing about these pencils that I think is very geared toward artists is the fact that they're essentially Plato. They have the consistency in pliability of Plato. And you don't need the entire block, by the way, you can always see that's a big mistake people make so right off the bat don't do that. People tend to that don't know any better, tend to kind of unwrap it and use it like this. You could, but I think it's so much harder what you wanna do? You wanna yank it out like a piece of the eraser on the block out? You know, use the whole thing. And now you have this malleable Plato to you can actually sharpen. See, the end of this probably gets the on camera. You can sharpen the end of that and you can actually kind of erase more strategically and mawr very specific with that edge, and you can have any edge you want. And then the more graphite that you take off, for example, hopes Let's go do example here. Does he have that there? You want to create a highlight in between something that's gonna take strategic amount of highlight out and see the It's all over. The actual you'll see actually comes off on the eraser. You just want to squish the eraser around kind of conducts heat and essentially goes away mixes in there. Eventually, there will be so much graphite in the eraser that you want to dump. It's just gonna slowly change color over time. But this is absolutely my favorite artist Eraser. You don't have to use it. A lot of people do. I highly recommend it for graphite or for like, charcoal drawings, which will go over in another video. But right now we're going over just pencil turns the paper. Uh, any kind of paper is fine. Uh, for the most part, I do recommend that you get, uh, computer paper. I get 11 by 17 computer paper. It's really inexpensive, and it's very cheap. You don't need fancy art paper, in my opinion, is really my opinion. But this is literally the same paper that you print computers on. You print you print, you know, documents on it works just fine. I would use this for practice if you want to practice on things I use. Like I said, 11 by 17 used 8.5 by 11. This is a and 1/2 by 11. I also recommend that if you want to use higher quality paper for long term drawings, I would use Bristol Board Bristol's amazing, um, and sketchbook paper as well. That paper you can all by anywhere you want. But I would say for practice, stick to, uh, just computer paper, in my opinion. So those are the tools. Really simple. Uh, let's go in the next video. 3. Structure: Okay, let's go over some important measurements and structure points when it comes to the eye. So read off the bat. If I was to think of the I is a simple polygon shape, it would be like this like a diamond shape. Put the nose shape here. So you understand what I am talking about. And its simplest form there is a peak on the upper lid kind of toward the center and, uh, kind of peak on the outer edge of the bottom lid. This isn't what you're trying to do is you're trying to find the average I and then customize it to the person that you're trying to draw or if you want, just like an average I to have when you're drawing people from your mind on. Like I said, we take an average I and then we customize it. What you don't want to do? See this? This angle portion is made so you don't do the biggest mistake I've seen drawing eyes, which is you draw this allman shape right here like a higher a cliff IQ. This shape right here is terrible. It looks weird. It flattens it out. It just doesn't look attractive. So we have to do is draw this peak toward the center and a peak on the outer edge of lower I and that makes it look more natural again. This is an a polygon form. When you're actually drawing it, it looks more organic. So, for example, like taking that shape into account, we were dropped. Something like that. There be a little bit of, ah, see this kind of peak on this side, but at the same time, it's organic, you know, it's actually ah, round inorganic, which is important, but the same time it has that angle. Another thing to think As you have to remember, the eye is literally shoved into the eye socket of the skull. So let's just draw a generic skull shape. So taking this new account, the eyes shoved into that eye socket. Thinking this and kind of remembering this is gonna make you draw the eye naturally curve year, naturally, with depth on, not just like a flat form, it's not completely flat, so you know when you draw it, when you're taking into account, you tend to tuck things a little bit better, and overall your drawings comes out a little bit more professional. Your I in general will come out a little bit more professional. Let's go over some quick measurements, uh, of the eye, and I'll go back to the depth of the I. So if you take ahead and split it into he put the eyeballs here, you're thinking in three D. The head is roughly five, all eyeballs wide. You can fit roughly. That would have the ear actually hanging off. So roughly about five miles wide, you'd have the year hanging out of there. Remember that for when you're placing it, when you're looking at the eyeball itself with zoom in on the eyeball, it's drawing, uh, the iris, right, the color portion of the eye. So if you look at the iris and taking the eyeball into the count, there's there's roughly you can fit three irises across the eyeball, So this is the eyeball here. If you zoom in, let's zoom into the iris itself. I try to make this a little bit bolder. So has that line on the outside of it. So if you have an iris, you have the pupil, which is a black portion. The people tested change kind of from big to small, based on how much light there is. But for this, on average, you're thinking of the average you can fit roughly three pupils into an iris like that's a measurement across Iris and the people in the iris. Let's go back to the depth of the I was talking about. So, like I said, with the I, the eyeball is shoved into the eye socket and then the eyelid is actually an opening. The island is an extra layer of skin that's above it. The island itself has a thickness to it. Both lower and the upper lid have a thickness threat, just knowing that is gonna be huge. And it's actually gonna let you, like, jumped leaps and bounds ahead of people that are self taught because people that are self taught don't really learn this way unless they see it like in a video like this. I've seen that allow when people try to draw themselves from life, and that's one of the biggest, biggest mistakes. They they don't think in three D. You have to think in three D. Things are popping out. There's eyelid that's a layer of skin over the eyeball, That eyeball is shoved into an eye socket. So just knowing that is gonna be gigantic, gigantic, it will improve your stuff. Uh, like from the start is gonna prove it. That's kind of it. In terms of the structure of the I just remember those things and it's literally golden. Just please remember this. You remember this for every drawing that you do in an old ingrained in you, and it'll just be, you know, just important. All right, let's move on. 4. Parts of the Eye: So let's go over the parts of the I really quick in terms of just labeling them through this simple, very simple, simplistic chart here. So the dark portion of the eyes actually called the iris. I'm sorry it's called the pupil. Forgive me. It's called the Pupil the colored portion of the I really beautiful color portion of the eye called the Iris. The white portion is called the skill era or skill era. Not really sure how toe square skill era There's the tear duct, which is that little ball kind of where you crowd of essentially like the tear duct, and that is kind of like a minor. It's a small detail within drawings, usually, but people do draw it. It kind of puts that extra, um, frontier into your eye drunks. Then there's the upper lid, and you can also put in a highlight. People tend to put in the highlights, and we're not gonna do that. I just wanna go with the bare basics of what you need to know. And obviously there's the eyebrow, which is above the brow, and in some cases you can draw the eyelashes. Some people don't usually draw the eyelashes. I tend to just draw a thick line for eyelashes, but I'm gonna go over that in the demonstration. All right, that's pretty much it. Let's go over the demonstration. Let's get started on that and I'll show you what I'm talking about. 5. Eye in Side view: All right, so let's go over a couple of things with the eye inside view the I am profile eso really quick. One of the most common mistakes people make is kind of the child mistake. And they did that, for example, Higher eggle if ICS that kind of I don't know if he did that for style that just didn't really know. But they always do this, you know, Let's just say you have the face inside view. You have this eye facing you just like Egyptian hieroglyphics. It's facing toward the viewer when in reality should be facing along with face to the left . Um, so that's wrong. Don't do that. You know, that's Ah, no, no. On that. Don't do that. Ah, what you should do when you're drawing the eye in profile inside view, it's gonna look Maura like this. It's gonna look more like the great advance sign or lesser than signed with an orb shoved into it again. The I is shoved into the eye socket. Uh, so it's gonna look more like that, and it's gonna conform to that in any views. So if it look, if you look at it in the up like lets you see the I and the head is turned up. The eyes gonna make this sort of shape and then turned down is not, you know, the other brow brow Hang over the I. You know, let me draw that That brown one a little bit more clear. You see that a lot with like, uh, if you're seeing a movie, it the clown. He always aims down. That's always supposed to like of menacing look, but also a lot of is he's turning his head down forward. That's a big part of that. Were the brow like hangs over the eye and covers the I. So that's hanging downward left. That's up. And you, they're making that sort of shape. Let's get rid of this here. They're making that sort of shape as the heads capturing. That's the eyeball, essentially. So let's do a quick little demonstration of the I in side view, which is way more common. So let's do that right now. A quick we'll do this one. So let's do real quick with pencil. I start with the side of my pencil right here. I do that top portion doing that less of that are greater. That sign and I put that orb that ball shoved in there was almost like a, I don't know, like a cue ball or something like, you know, like a pool ball. I agree a little thickness up here with side of my pencil again, give that little bit thickness that upper lid and giving that little thickness the lower lid pulling, pulling it up a little bit. And then I got dropped placeholder for the eyebrow, which is going to kind of do that's gonna wrap around. Eyebrows are very malleable, of course, because their hair so you know, those different shapes of them. People mess with them, of course, pluck him, do all that stuff. So but generally it's it's something like, you know, that shape or, um, I'll talk more about as we go into it, and then the people on Iris that also conform to this shape a little bit. They're going to get the edge right here, looking out that direction. That hero here make it clear, like working on my arrows right now, so that's kind of already you can already see an I. That's a good sign when you just use the side, The pencil on you can already see that shaped forming. So let's go into it a little bit further. I'm gonna thicken outta line right here. This line What? It's gonna do our thinking it right here and use the tip. My pencil. I could use this kind of a mid portion of pencil, but I'm not gonna do that. And I'm gonna make the, uh it's gonna pick in this, and that's gonna essentially create the illusion of the eyelashes. They're bunched together, um, and pull up for the front of the front of the upper lid right there. I'm dark in that a bit. Pull that back with any erasure. Roll that in here into the kind of fold of the upper lid. Connect the eyebrow to the to, uh, kind of the edge of the eye here. So when you have the eye I shoved in that eye socket, correct. And you have the ridge of the nose toward the top, your nose it's going they're gonna is gonna have his rolling section, which is the kind of your eye socket that's kind of trying to indicate with this behind the eye, connecting to the the eyebrow. I'm trying to indicate that section where the actual like I said, orbital bone of the eye kind of rolls into the eyebrow and the way to separate that. See how they're too close in value doesn't run. They're both relate. I'm going to dark in the the eyebrow. I'm just gonna fill it in like I'm filling in a shape. Uh, you know, like a like a coloring book. Just filling it in flat is a flat, generally flat, pushing it pretty hard. And then I'm gonna pull small hairs out of it with the tip of my pencil. Pulled small hairs out there. If we could see that Sorry and blocking. Ah, and you can kind of manipulate that based on who the person is or what kind of style you're going for. If it's, you know, one of your head, you can just kind of toy with it. You know what directional flow do their eyebrows take, You know, some girl kind of outward. So there's a lot of variation on that on Let's go back into the I hear itself so that dark shape I'm going to kind of mess a little bit more. I'm gonna create a darker shape for the pupil here and connect that dark shape up into kind of the upper area of the eye into the the eyebrow. I'm sorry, Eyelash gonna be here messing with the lower lid. Erase that a little bit thick line for the bottom with hair for the lower eyelashes, and I am going to draw the edge of the eyelid and then a little of the bottom one. I'm not giving the bottom one of fold all the way down because it will make it look older. It is a type, though, so you can always kind of push that type the thick, thicker line through the outside of the eye. Thicker line here as well. I wanna separate that area from the rest. No, right. And that's pretty much it. That's a quick, uh, kind of side view of the eye. If you want to have it like it's attaching to the head, let's say, even though if it's just a floating, I you can kind of throw it. Like I said with a side of your pencil, A little bit of value here and it's gonna show the I may be rolling into the nose. It's gonna indicate that happening. You can always do that. So it's not just a floating eyeball, but Florida ambles air. Fine, too, is doing for style points essentially, And it was That's the side View V I. And like I said, I went over a little bit of the kind of the other views of the I like the Open them down. That's pretty much it. Let's move on to the next part. 6. Demonstration: Okay, so this is we're gonna go over how to draw. And that's kind of this type of I We're gonna use this pencil. So let's kind of get into the demonstration. I will start with, like I said, the graphite, You know, five b. I'm gonna start laying it in with a side of my pencil here. Think of those geometric shapes I talked about before. I'm going with a side of my pencil and I wanted to be soft. I don't want any line to be too permanent. Think of that peak. That other peak still more or less using the side. When I think of, ah, the Irish, they tend to draw the whole thing and then use the needy racer here to kind of erase the parts above here where the island would be kind of covering it. Think of the upper lid and drawing and really soft. I'm trying not to be too permanent, that many. You put something permanent right off the bat. It's gonna be really hard to move it. And you have Teoh erase it much harder and it's getting such a hassle. Let's go into the ball of the I hear I'm sort of all of the ag. Of all the iris. Iris doesn't have a black band around it. That colored portion. Now I'm starting the pupil to the dark portion as a reminder. Be saying stuff over again, just kind of get into the mind. The island itself cast a tiny bit of shadow, and that's more or less what I'm indicating what I'm doing. This pulling down this far side under lid, pulling up with the eye connects the face. It tends to be a little bit of a bag of the eye here because of the shelf where the noses I'm beyond. Let me put the just the nose shape here so you know that which I am talking about. I'm gonna go in toy with the fold of that upper island, and that upper island leads into the eye socket area. And that's a con cave shape kind of leading into the bridge of the nose, which will go for that. Another video, the bridge of the nose. But there's a con cave shaped from the eyeball leading into the nose itself, and I want to indicate that with this value, when I say value, I mean shadow essentially or just kind of any anything doesn't be direct shadow. It could be just kind of, Ah, they're not white, essentially not white area. So let's go into the I. I don't want the pupil to just essentially be a black floating spot. I wanted to connect because the island is wrapping over it. That's the key to making it look natural. That's kind of an issue I've seen a lot of people's drawings is they won't connect the pupil toe anything, and they look scared in every single drawing. What you want. You want connected to the upper lid, using that the like the value of the upper lid. Let it has a bit of shadow that comes down its sound because the light source is coming from above. We'll go over shading completely in another video. But just for the simple fact is that the light source usually comes from above, and it will cast a very tiny shadow because it's the light is hitting the above and causing a shadow to form below it going over here, drawing on the tear duct a little bit, just putting a little circle and pushing a little bit harder. Now. I'm making some a little more permanent right here. Left on the pupil. I left a little area open here so I can throw a highlight in here, connecting it to the lower lid. Then I'm drawing some value falling into the iris, the colored portion color portion. The iris is really beautiful. Striations. These lines that go toward the center, you can draw some of those end. Don't overdo them. You can draw as many as you want, kind of knowing that I'm going to re emphasize the band of dark around the outside of that Irish making sure all the values are justus dark is each other pulling in, pulling down, pulling a little bit of a darker Valium, pushing my pencil harder. When I say darker, I'm pushing harder on my pencil in order. Created darker shape is pushing harder, and sometimes you have to push too much harder because you can just go over it over and over again till it becomes darker. Don't indented paper too bad, because that will cause if you have to erase something, it will be extremely almost impossible to get out down the lower lid. So the upper lid has that. I'm gonna use a side of my pencil, and I see that top lit right there. It's just a line. I want that line to be a little fuzzier from one side to make it look like the organic skin is rolling into that that fold. You push your finger there, but I wouldn't do it too much because finger tends to rub oil, natural oil from your hand on to the paper, and you might have able to get it out. Um, there's a lot of white over here when you could do is go down very lightly on the side of your pencil. Very light, very light and fill this area in. Even though it's the white of the eye, it looks a little too white won't look organic. How the rolling into the sides could make those a little bit darker along the side. Second pull highlight of that. See the way that that highlights on the school era itself. There's obviously a highlight right here, because this area of the pupil so dark. But if you want to pull highlights from the skin area or the skill era, which is the white portion the I. You're going to put down more value so that you can work with it. But you have to be careful not to overdo it. And thats another common mistake. I see people do. They will push down too hard, so you don't have to take one pass through this. Give a little bit of seasoning. I have teachers in my old high school. Teachers say that give a little bit of seasoning and you may be pulled convincing. Highlight out of that with your kneaded eraser getting a little bit of a highlight there. If you want, you can cheat it and try to make it a little bit darker just near that highlight. Maybe throw some here into the iris. Let's hear a little bit more of that stuff on the lower leg. I feel like the lower lid. He's more value. I don't really draw eyelashes. I think I Let's just look really strange, but we could. I usually just draw a thicker like I'll draw with a side of my pencil, go down and create a thicker line which indicates eyelashes. But you can pull shapes from that. Pull some eyelashes from here, but don't overdo them because they can easily, easily get out of hand. Just small indications. That's it for the demonstration. That's a very straightforward I from one view from the front view. So let's review what we went over. We went over the points of the I kind of what it is. The I is, uh, the eye is basically an eyeballs shoved into an eye socket of the skull and with an opening of skin that wraps around the eye ball. And that skin opens up to form the islands. And it sounds gruesome, like an anatomy class. But they open up and they wrap around, and that's what makes it look more real, more organic. The iris itself. Color portion, the eye, the iris. You can fit roughly three irises across an average eyeball, and the pupil the black portion. You can fit three pupils across an iris. On average, there's the tear duct. There's a skill era. There's the Irish, there's a pupil. There's a eyelid. There's eyebrow, which I didn't really draw. Here there's an eyebrow, which is big and tapers toward. In the end, I start with a dark mass, and then I could pull out hairs afterwards. So I do that dark mass with a side of my pencil, and I could pull out small lines with the tip of the pencil. You can even pull back with your eraser, your kneaded eraser, and you can almost carve it in with your kneaded eraser. Darken it in, darkened in something in the press down harder on the pencil. Or you can china go over it over and over again until you create a darker shape. You know what? It's fine. Be careful, not decrease the paper. This has shading but has very light forms of shading. You don't have to know exactly what shading works to do this. Just understand that there's light coming from above casting a small shadow, and these items that are in light will have some value to them. His value, inherent value and skin tone. And the highlight is most of the pure white. There's a brow here that can hang over the upper eyelids. Some people have it very heavy, using the side to lay that down, that I'm gonna use my kneaded eraser to pull those shapes out. Okay, 7. Getting Good Fast: So, what do you need to get good at this? Very quickly. Um, to get better at drawing in general, there's I'll give you some of most common mistakes I've been teaching for years. And some of the most common mistakes I see among students is that they just don't practice enough. Start drawing once a day, go over the process. We went over. You wanna in grain? Uh, first of all of this shape, that diamond shape of the I. You know, the iris, the people, the measurements start drawing several eyes from photos that you see, you can start drawing them. Uh, simply lin early linearly. First, just draw the lines of the I do an entire page of those. I'll do one page a day of nothing but eyeballs in linear format. Just purely. I just purely line. The reason for that is you want to learn how to draw the structure. You want that structure to be second nature to you. And once you get that structure down, be easier to kind of go into value, and the idea of value is kind of finishing remark. You want to get that structure down first and normally when you get that down. Like I said, everything else is easy. So just know the parts. In practice, I would say, Do one page of eyes a day. Put six six pairs of eyes per page. You have to the pair. You could do six eyes per page. Do that roughly after a week or two. I think you will have some success, but it's also an ongoing thing. Drawing is but put in the mileage. The mileage is so important. Another thing I want to tell you is, Don't be so down on yourself. A lot of artists tend to be very negative about their own progress. This is learning. The faster you go through your mistakes, the faster you will come up with great drawings. I know they said, get the 1st 1000 drawings out of the way, and I could agree with that. You get the first bad drawings out of the way. The 1st 1000 the 1st 100 The quicker you go through those, the quicker you'll get used to the process and the quicker things will click for you. You're gonna progress faster than 95% of people. If you do this. If you draw a lot, you will progress faster. 95% of people. Because most people don't. Most people just don't do that. Most people practice once every two weeks. If you practice something, anything once every two weeks, you're probably gonna get very good at it very fast. Well, you want to do is your practice daily and you want to build that muscle memory in your mind and your heart muscle memory will be in your hand, I guess, and coordination with your mind. That would be my biggest take away from this. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you watching this. I'm very, very grateful to kind of teach and be here on. I really hope to hear from you guys either on bottom here or maybe one day. You know, uh, somewhere on the on on the site, I want to thank you. And I want to thank you for being here. And it's been a great experience so far, and there's a lot more lessons to come. I'm gonna be putting several different set of any questions. Let me know