How to Draw an Eyebrow in Graphite

1. How to Draw an Eyebrow in Graphite Introduction: Hey, my name is Laura Bevis and I'm a self taught artist. I was recently on maternity leave and I always find that when I come back to art after a long break that it really helps me to do some small studies. I figured this was the perfect opportunity for me to do some short videos for you to focus on little things that will help you get your realism up a little bit and help with your overall portraits, but it's just focusing on one thing at a time. What I'd love for you to do is grab a sketchbook and come along with me for this. Today, we are going to work on how to draw an eyebrow. This is all real time video it literally took me 10 minutes and hopefully you will find these tips helpful and I would love for you to do your own version, whether you follow along with my video or you get your own reference photo, whatever you want to do and put that in the project section. I can't wait to see what you draw. 2. How to Draw an Eyebrow in Graphite: So this is just a super quick but real time tutorial of how to draw an eyebrow. This took me around 10 minutes of real time, so that's why I kept it in real time for you. And I'm just going to go through how I do it with you. And if you don't want to listen to me talk the whole time, feel free to just kind of speed through it because like I said, it's a relatively quick video, but I did keep it in real time. So, the first thing that I always try to focus on when doing an eyebrow is something that actually took me a while to understand when I first started, and I think it makes a huge difference in terms of realism is you need to draw, at least somewhat draw the skin that's underneath the eyebrow hairs. So you can't just take a blank piece of paper and draw the eyebrow hairs on there and have it look realistic. It's not going to have the correct shadowing. It's not going to show the correct bone structure, things like that that are underneath those hairs. So you have to remember that that's a thing when you are going to think about drawing your eyebrow. So the first thing that I do is I do kind of a base underneath of those shadows. So the spots that are going to be darker shadows because they're, you know, kind of where the brow ridge is sticking out, so you get a little bit of shadowing underneath. It's going to be lighter above the eyebrow generally. And then just any other shadows that are specific to your reference photo based on the lighting of that photo. Um, and again, it's really important to kind of get the idea of that underneath the actual eyebrow hairs. So that's what I'm doing here. That's what you see me doing here is I'm really just doing the skin underneath first. And it doesn't need to be perfect. It doesn't need to be you don't want to use up all the tooth of the paper, so you're not trying to make it so that it's as finished as the skin that doesn't have hair on top of it would be. But it needs to have at least a little bit of that kind of general shading. So you have your highlights and your shadows in there so that when you go and put those hairs on top, it looks realistic, and it's going to look like the eyebrow is on top of the skin on top of the skull versus, you know, it just being on top of the white paper, it's going to look very flat that. So, again, this is where you want to check with your reference photo, try to see the shadows underneath there and just kind of block that in a little bit first. Again, it does not need to be perfect. It doesn't need to be the whole as smooth as you would normally have it be for the skin that doesn't have the hair on top. Also, another thing to think about is where you're having the spots that are the hairs are going directly into the skin. So they're more sparse. And you want to make sure that you have the shadowing and everything done in that area first, too. So, like, right underneath the eyebrow, I always make sure that I finish that shading before starting this. So again, that's just little things to think about. And if the way that your brain works, you do it slightly different than this, and that works better for you. That's fine. I'm not saying that this is the only way to do it. This is just the way that I do it. After I get that skin layer kind of done, then I kind of go in with a general block of the eyebrow. So this eyebrow that I was doing was pretty dense, pretty dark. So I wanted to go in and just kind of generally shade in a little bit of that shape of the eyebrow to start with. If you have a super sparse or a super light eyebrow, you may not want to do this first because it may end up getting too dark. But for this specific reference, this is what worked. So again, I'm just finishing up that shading underneath the eyebrow, too, at this point and then just getting a general block in of where the eyebrow hairs are going to go. In general, what you're going to see with eyebrows, and again, look at your reference photo because some might be slightly different. But in general, you're going to see where the side of the eyebrow that's towards the ear is going to be a little bit there's going to be a little bit of a shadow as it starts to kind of bend towards the ear as the face is kind of rounding off towards the ear. So that's why you see a little bit more shading on that edge, as well. Again, your reference photo might be different. If your light source is coming from that side, you wouldn't have that, but just that's more a general when you have general lighting, that's something that you'll see. So after I've kind of blocked that all in, now is when I'm finally starting with the actual eyebrow hairs. This is where it's really important to check with your reference photo on the exact angle and shape of the eyebrow because everybody is as different. You will see a general um direction for most eyebrows, you will see that starting from the nose side, they kind of go up and out towards the ear. And then as you get towards the middle of the eye, sometimes they start to be a little more horizontal. And then as it goes towards the ear, you see them kind of sloping down downwards towards the ear. So that's the general direction that most eyebrows have. Again, check with your reference photo because some people might have slightly different directions of the hairs in different places. So to get that realism, you want to make sure that you're matching that as closely as you can. As with, if you've watched any of my tutorials on hair or fur or anything like that, um, it's what's not the most important thing is you don't want to be focusing on getting every single hair in the exact right position. Unless what you're drawing for some reason, you need to have that for it to be exact. So if there's some super distinct thing about it, then that's different. But in most cases, it's all about just getting the general direction and then the feeling of fullness that you want to achieve. So you don't have to stress about, Oh, my God, this hair in the exact right spot or not? Just try to get that general direction correct, and then it will look realistic. Like I said, this reference photo is a darker eyebrow, and it's pretty dense eyebrow. So I went through with this first layer, and then I'm going to come back and do some more. If you have a lighter eyebrow, then you may want to come through and do some highlights at this point. Um, so even a dark eyebrow is going to have highlights. But what I did in this case was I actually just let the paper, like, the underneath part that I had done that skin tone with. I let that be my highlights. And I just came back through with another layer. And as with any kind of hair or fur or anything like that that you're doing, the way that you're going to achieve that look of kind of a denser look is by doing multiple layers and making sure that you're not putting hairs right on top of each other. So you have them kind of criss crossing. Again, they're still going in that same general direction, but they're kind of criss crossing over each other a little bit, so it looks like there's all these layers and layers and layers there. So that's what I just kept doing here. And again, because it was darker, I was using a little more pressure on the pencil. And again, I didn't go through and pull out as many highlights as I would have if this was say this was a blonde hair eyebrow, I would have used my Mono Zero eraser and come through and done some lighter hairs. You want to keep the same idea of, you know, kind of criss crossing them and doing those little highlights. But you can do some of the hairs with the Mono Zero eraser, in that case, if it's a lighter color eyebrow that you're drawing. Again, in this case, it was very dark. So I just let the um, the paper underneath the skin tone underneath kind of be my highlights. You'll also see me doing some hairs on the top there. I just did some hairs on the top there that were kind of coming down, and that's where when the ones that are going right into the skin, you want to have a little less pressure where it's going into the skin, and then maybe a little bit more pressure as it's the hair kind of growing out. Think of it that way. So where it's going into the skin is going to be lighter because it's, um, it's going into the skin, right? So you're not seeing the full hair at that point. It's like, um, uh, you don't see the whole root of the hair, right? Like, if you pulled out a hair, there's this big chunk that you didn't see because it was under the skin. So that part where it's kind of going into the skin, you want to have that be a little bit lighter because it'll give that illusion of it going into the skin. If you can't achieve that with just the way that you do your pencil stroke, you can always come back with an eraser to kind of lighten up those bits where it's going into the skin. But what I do is I just try to instead of applying a ton of pressure to start with, I just do very light pressure and then get heavier with my pressure as I do the stroke of the hair. Um, I did come through with a few highlights here, but again, not that many because it was a darker eyebrow. So that's really it for this. I hope that you found all of my tips helpful, and I can't wait to see your projects in the project section.