How to Draw WATERCOLOR Eyes | Like a PRO Artist

1. How to Water Color Eyes like a PRO: Hey, how's it going, everybody? I'm Enrique, artist and illustrator. Today we're gonna go over how to draw watercolor eyes. So let me tell you a really quick, tiny story for me. When I was in art school. I would draw over and over and over again. I love drawing eyes. I love drawing faces, things of that sort. But I was so afraid of color, right? I was really freaked out by it. I couldn't even admit it. I was just like, Man, everything I would do is black and white, black and white, black and white. I was so afraid to touch this other medium from pencil or pen. Pencil and pen just seems so like it seems so safe for me. And this was the first time ventured out and I never came back in. It was just amazing to use this and it made me feel like, wow, I'm like real, real artists now write using this watercolor medium because to be honest, this is the easiest medium to transition into other sorts of painting, even digital painting. I think this is easier in my opinion. But yeah, so that's the idea is you want to be able to expand your horizons and this is the easiest step to it. What we're going to go over here is how to add watercolor. Eyes are the window to the soul. Um, it's gonna be a short lesson. And I guess if you're a beginner, if you're a complete beginner, you're absolutely going to get this. And that's pretty much it. This is why I presented to you, and I think this is incredibly important lesson for a lot of people in their development. But that's pretty much it. We can just jump right into the video sets off. Forgot to talk about this. What is inside this? Right off the bat. We're gonna go over a little bit about the watercolor itself, right? And a couple of different lessons on kind of the techniques about that. And then we're gonna go into straight full-blown demonstration. Alright, let's jump right into the lesson and let me know if you have any questions below. 2. Everything You NEED to know about the EYE: Okay, so let's go over really quick. Some of the stuff on the basic eye because you have to kinda know the basic dye in order to start the watercolor. I. So real fast. Let's just say we have a, the face looking at us, right, these two eyeballs. Let's go over this one here. We're gonna go into this side. Right? So his limousine, their left eye and the one on our right side. We like to simplify things very easily because it makes them understandable and also makes them easy to remember. So when I look at this, I, in general, a generalization of an eye. I like to think of it as a completely a geometric shape, something like this, right? That's pretty much kind of the way I think about it. And you can break that down even more, right? So the idea is that you're up angle out here. Let me down, out over here. Up over there. There's gonna be a little bit of a peek here on this side. And there's gonna be a little bit of a peek here on the bottom side. If we're looking at this, I generally a little bit of a peek here. Go down. Ignore this as a mistake. And that's gonna be a little peak here on the bottom, on the bottom outside of the eye. This is broadly speaking, right? You can take this, make anything you want with it. You can go over here and make an animate I, which has actually a similar type of thing going on. There's a little bit of a peek here on the bottom right and a little bit of peak in the top-left. For eyes on this side of the face. Very, very broad. If you go into the eye itself. Something here that I'm going to tell you as a, if you're a beginner, this'll, this'll change it really fast, is when you make the pupil and iris always make it connect to something. Okay? The reason you want to connect to something is because it'll look afraid otherwise, let's just say you draw the circle of the iris here. And let's just say you draw the pupil in the middle. That's going to look surprised. It's going to look like a hieroglyphic. Like that's a very newbie thing. You want to connect it right here to the bottom of the top. Preferably the top. That's usually more sign of relaxation. The top. So that's going to make it look like the eyelid looks more natural. And it just looks like someone's hanging out as opposed to freak out, right? This is for a general portraits. Of course you'll use this when someone is freaked out. For a shadow. I like to even connect the shadow to the top here, maybe a highlighted there. Because the eyelid itself causes a little bit of a cast shadow down into the sclera, which is the white of the eye. Let's go over some really cool, quick basic measurements to kinda bring that together. So if you're thinking about the eyeball, like in the in the eye socket there. The iris, which is the colored portion, is about 1 third, right? The length of the eyeball. So about 1 third is a sheep in general, but you can change, you can make it bigger, you can make it smaller. But that's just a broad idea. And if you were to go inside this, the black part, the iris, inside the colored portion, the iris is 1 third. The iris is 1 third the size of the black part right here. That black portion is 1 third the size of that colored portion. Just to kinda keep things relative. When you're thinking about things with the eye, the eye itself is kinda like an opening it has as its own. You got to remember that the eye itself is the eyeball. It's not just flat in there, right? It is literally kind of curving the corner here. And its open up right here for the eye lid, the lower lid. And then open up here for the upper limb. Right, there is a depth to it and it's not just a completely flat like a picture which is, I think a lot of people look at it as you have to remember that there's an eyeball wrap. The eyelid itself wraps around the ball of the eye. So if you look at something like this, and let's add an eyeball, Let's add in eyelids and it's up over here. Girl right here, down right the bottom lid. We're going to do a little bit, but not much. We might even leave it open like that depending every time you put like a when you put how do you call it? When you put a line underneath, it tends to age the eye. That's why an anime and stuff. They tend to draw just one line right there. And that tends to just give it a little bit of like, okay, there is a natural part of the eye but there's no Aging going on. And that's kinda what they do a whole lot with the lower eyelid. Usually, the upper eyelid is kinda where they have it. The upper eyelid varies based on your type, obviously, and actually the whole shape of the eye varies. But Try to remember that peaking right here on this side of the eye and the peaking on the bottom. And generally, you can kind of more fit and shape into kind of like whatever type of item you want. But we're going over a general eyes and that's kinda what I wanted to go over. Those are some very quick basics that I think will get you started. So let's kinda jump into the water color aspect of this and kind of how we're gonna do this. First thing we're gonna do is we're gonna go over very quickly the tools in the next section here, but let's jump into that stuff. 3. Watercolor Tools: Okay, really quick. What kind of watercolor set do you want? I bought this. You can buy anything you want. I think almost any watercolor would be fine. I bought this, I think for like 20 bucks. Well, it's kinda stuck though. That's what happens when you don't clean it. I mean, I do clean them but it's just very well aged, right? So this thing was literally 20 bucks. They have bigger, more elaborate sets, which you can definitely mess around with that and that's fun to do. So you always want to keep in mind what you wanna do. I recommend for you if you're a beginner at this, which I assume you are, to get something very basic, like this. Very, very basic kit. Don't spend a lot of money on it when you use it a lot and then you use it through. Then you want to buy stuff that's like, Okay, hey, I want to buy the elaborate set now, right? When you really got stuff, Roland. And the whole thing about all of this stuff is you want the momentum of like art to be your thing, right? The momentum, once you get that rolling, you're going to improve quicker and faster than you really ever thought. Because you have this momentum going by momentum. I mean, you have to practice like almost every day. Just a little bit. I wouldn't people asked me this a lot. Would you practice like eight hours a day and then for two weeks, take a break? Or would you do like half an hour day? And absolutely the answer is half an hour a day because what that's doing is it's kinda building the habit of doing that. And you kinda do that a little bit through time. You can do it, a lot of it through time, but really doing like one hardcore quote-unquote art workout per se. That's like eight hours or something like that. And then taking two weeks off that you're not going to get better like that. In my opinion, if you just wanna do it as a hobby, that's absolutely great. But if you want to be like pretty decent at this hobby, I highly recommend. You just do a tiny bit every day. Do you like 20 minutes a day? Boom, boom. You're getting your mindset. You get in your mind to like go to it all the time. I know there's a there's pros and cons to that. But to be honest, the pros are so much bigger than the cons. Really quick, let me go over this. I just started using this as a watercolor pencil. I think they call it water color. Noted. This is like a aqua brush and these are great. So let's just say you don't have water and you're out and about somewhere, you can use this is basically it is what it is. It's clear. You fill it up with water. You don't have to carry water around. We just pretty cool. You could to refill it, but you can kinda refill it in the sink. And the idea is you squeeze a little bit and it kinda feels the tip there. We've just clear water to foreigners about the square root of nine. And then you go over here to your paint, whatever it is that you choose, right? And then now you're reactivating that with water, right? And you can go over here and just start putting it down. And you can do this with travel. This is literally one of the things that's changed my entire watercolor experience. So really, really, really check these out. They're super cheap. I cannot remember the price off the top of my head. Really, really good stuff. Highly recommend that. And definitely watch those out after though, because those can get pretty funky. Thing I do recommend here is I kinda do this for the inking program as well. And this is the Pentel brush. I think there's a Pentel brush pen. It can be this one or it could be this one. I think. I don't remember what I think they're Pentel. But both of these are essentially the black ink. But I like to think of them as watercolor, essentially because I worked with them a lot when I use watercolor. So the idea is that again, you have this, you don't have to dip it constantly. I don't have to use that for black watercolor. You just kind of have this brush pen with you at all times. And the idea is that you set them kind of the base structure with that. And you go into it with the colors after it's dried. Same thing with this one. These two are basically the exact same thing except this one is refillable. Really, really amazing stuff, and these are kinda hard to handle. So what I would do is, like I said, with this, I would practice a little bit every day. If anything, this is so much easier pieces, literally a single pen as opposed to a tiny kit here. But that's kinda what I use. I this one I do recommend you can get all this stuff on Amazon honestly, or go to Michael's if you live in the States. Really, really just very inexpensive things. Paper, I forgot to talk about paper. Get watercolor paper. Any kind of watercolor paper is fine. This paper right here is literally the painter from my computer. I do not recommend this. If you want to do elaborate watercolors is gonna go right through the paper. I do have watercolor paper, but I don't even need need to show it to you. It's any brands. Okay. And any like thickness and weight is fine. It will buckle a little bit. But it's made for that. So it's not that big a deal. If you use heavier watercolor paper, I don't have a heavier thickness. It won't warp at all. And that's up to you. But you can get like little sketch pads of that really, really fun stuff. But don't use printer paper like this, okay, use watercolor paper. And you're going to have an amazing time. It's cheap as well. All this stuff is cheap and that's kinda the good part. Unless you buy the elaborate set of this. Anyways, that's it about the rambling. If you have any questions on supplies, do me a huge favor. Put the put something in the comments section. Hey, I don't know about this well a lot and I'll let you know. Okay. So let's move on into our basic black and white eyes first. 4. Layering the PAINT: Alright, let's go over this stuff pretty quickly. So I'm going to be using this palette. And along with the palette, I'm going to be using. This right here is a watercolor pencil. It's awesome. I recommend you get one of these because you don't have to carry around like a bucket of water or anything like that. You can just kinda like pour it in here. You use it. Use it willy-nilly. It's so, so, so good. I'm going to talk really quick, just about a few of the mechanics about watercolor if you've never used it. So normally what I would like to do is you're selecting any of these colors for giving me that this thing is like kinda dirty, really dirty. But Let's just say we had a I don't know, something over here right now. It's just the mechanics, so we're not going to go over the eye. The eye is the reason here, but just really quick in the mechanics. There's so when you put a gouache or a wash about something, right? Let's take any color here. We're putting down a wash real quick, meaning a very transparent layer of whatever color you want. And I think that's this color right here, like a violet color. You dip it in the water. And I can tell you exactly the consistency of I can tell you like, Oh yeah, I use this kind of consistency, but you're gonna get better through experimenting yourself, right? Of how much paint to water ratio you're going to have, right? So if you look on this side, I think this kid comes in on camera. I put another layer on there and it comes out darker. This is lighter, right? You can usually let it dry out or dry it with a what do you call it like a blow dryer. But you can just kinda keep piloted on. I think I think there's a limit though because I have to wait till it's dry. We can go back to something like down here. And absolutely just keep piling debt on. The layering method is kinda the way almost everyone does it. Because if you ever look at people, watercolor and that's the first thing I was wondering, like how they get those really dark, like this right here that I layered that on. That's a finished one, right? It's right in there, that dark area. I kept layering on that area, letting it dry. Let it, let it dry, layer it on, right? And your whites are going to be so example a highlight in the flower here. The highlights are literally just the paper, right? That makes it different from acrylic, makes it different from oil paints. We're usually, you put it in there, you spot it out in there. This one, you just use the weight of the paper and if you screw that up, let's say like listen, you spill something over it. What you could do is get some acrylic and just start using it on there just for the highlights. Or get some gouache. Gouache is a great wash, is a great one because it's so close to it, so close to watercolor because it is water-soluble. So we're gonna go down a little bit deeper, darker. Let's see if it will do happen to see how that's. And you're moving it around here and you're moving it around the surface, you're playing with that paint, you just kinda spreading it around. That's something that I learned as well. Because in the beginning you're like, oh, doesn't matter. You kind of want to let it to fate, right? You see this block right here. You kinda wanna leave it to fate like, oh, it's just going to fall where it falls. And now you're going to control that and move that Blache around to even it out or move it around here. You're doing that. I'm really thrilled. Piloted on now. Now it looks like a completely different thing and we're using the exact same color right there. So I just want to make the differences is really extreme. And so you're gonna be using this all the time. That piling on method, the layering on method, you're gonna be using that all the time. It's tiny bit of method. You're just going to be using that. But that's kinda it as far as the mechanics go. You're gonna, I'm gonna be going through mechanics as we go through the demonstrations. But just kinda, I wanted to focus on that in this video. As far as you can. Like I said, you can get a bucket of water. You can put a water here in the center of your palate. Like I said in the last video, this palette was like 20 bucks. It was really cheap. You can get a more expensive one. And I would recommend washing it out. This is kinda gross. They're easier to wash out because they're water-soluble. So just kinda keep that in mind. So in the next one, well, let's move on and I'll talk about the two ways that I actually go over how to watercolor eyes in general. As far as also, I'm going to go over kind of what colors to pick. But anyways, that's it. Let's jump into the next lesson just to kind of really get into it. 5. Method 1: Okay, So I'm going to show you one way and then we'll go the other way. Okay. So this method or this one, I wouldn't say method. I guess it isn't method, but you would do the ink first and then you watercolor it afterward, right? As opposed to the other way, which is the reverse. So this is the one way to do it. Okay. Let me, okay. So I need my brush pen here. I have my brush pen right here. You don't have to do the brush pen. You can do it with the fabric Estelle are the microns or anything, any sort of ink. But I'm just trying to say I'm going to put it down first. So right here I'm gonna go in for the inner eye area. Why is my ink is running out on this one? So one-minute, just going to squeeze the tip here, squeeze, squeeze this. Alright. It's kind of pulling a line over here as well. One over here. The line down here, the idea is that basically what I'm doing is I'm just kinda like putting out every, the final line art for the actual the actual eye, right? You're doing it first like this. And then what you're doing afterward as you're going into it more, I wouldn't say exactly like a coloring book with something to that extent, something kinda near coloring book status. The eye right here, line over here for the the eyes right there. The brown eyebrow here. So then I'm going to go in here, like we said, and I'm going to find the iris highlight right here. And then the dot for the pupil. Okay? Then I'm going to draw maybe a couple of lines here. Nothing, nothing too wild, but I want my darks in there already. Right? It's almost looks like a complete like drawing image. I'm going to wait for that dries a bit. And after that, I'm going to go into it with my my, my my actual colors here. So what I would want first, I guess is the eye color and the color is going to be a blue eye. I'm just going to say, I like blue eyes a lot. So that's pretty much the first thing to do. And let's go here. That blue I click again, like a napkin in your hand would be a good idea. Right here, Let's look at some water. Put it over here. Just kind of dabbing it in there, picking an area of the palette. And I'm gonna go in here and just kinda put it down. I think it needs more water though because I want to dilute it a little bit first because it's better to do that droplet of water from that kind of diluting it. I'm going to pull up, pull down more. There you go. A little bit weaker, see how it's a little bit. And they move this out of the way a little bit just so the shadow doesn't cover it up. Go over here. I have that right there. See just kinda like a little bit like a little bit less intense. I'm going to pull it over, kind of moving it around here as I do that. I'm moving it around to kind of give it some light gradient, right? I want it dark and I want it to roll into light and some areas. I'm gonna put maybe some more water and make it even lighter. Because I kinda want the whole eye, the sclera kind of a wash over the sclera. The sclera is the white portion of your eye, but I don't want it to be totally totally white. I think what I'd like it to be as I'd like it to be blue but really, really diluted, like really diluted. So if you look at what I'm doing over here, i'm, I can even put it over here on one of these. I really just going to take the blue and put a bunch of water with it. Not a bunch, but quite a bit more water. Really want to dilute it almost clear. And I'm going to take that. Let me go over here. And I'm going to Across almost all of it except I'm going to leave a line right here. Like that. I dry and want that to be just kind of like that on its own. So let's go back in here with good luck in here with a bit more. Some dark graphs, some of the black here. I'm actually kinda do it with this or this one. A little bit of black, a little bit of a black-skinned. I'm mixing this together. And I'm gonna go right here, right below the eyelid. Rebel of eyelid. Just to give it a little bit of shadow. And probably go here for a little bit of light wash of orange. And he's a little bit of orange and I didn't. You can mix it a little bit red. Mostly orange and I'm getting a little bit of black there. To fill in some of the parts of the skin. Here. I think it needs a little bit more water. And C compiler, I use the pen over here, spread it out. But this way is the cool part about is everything is fixed. And you would say there is, if feels like there's more stability and doing it this way because we are underneath here a little bit of bags under the eyes, but doing that with color. The reason it feels more stable is because you already have a solid foundation there, right? And you would have a tear that down for something to go really, really wrong. But if you're careful enough, you don't really need to worry about that. We're here and we're kind of moving around, like I was saying earlier, wound around around around the wet part, right? You're moving these pieces around. Like you're moving a little puddles around, essentially. Try and move it around before it dries on me. Right. Because once it dries, I mean, it's kinda it's just going to start layering as opposed to anything else. All right. Well that's happening and go back in with a little bit of little bit of blue. Just a little bit too blue, they're a little bit of blue and yellow. A little bit more blue, right in the eye. They're just kinda give it a little bit more life. I would say blue does want to dilute the water a little bit. It's just, you don't want it to be completely, completely like Sonic the Hedgehog blue. You're going to name most of the sclera except for the highlight right there. I want that highlight to pop a little bit. So I would use it maybe a little bit of blue closer to that area. Like so. You really want to go into, you can go back in with the you can go back in with a black to pull out some stuff. So that would be the one way to do it is you put your line art down and then put your, essentially your colors over that in a very simple way. That'd be one way to do it. Alright, let's go over the second way now. Okay, stick around for the next one. This one might be your thing more. So let's go over the other way. 6. Method 2: Alright, let's go back for the second way. So the second way is gonna be a little bit different. I'm going to throw a bit of a wash. Put a little bit of a wash. I'm going to make it maybe a little too much right there through a wash where I think the sclera is going to be, which is a white of the eye, just a little bit of blue there. Oops, that's way too much. I mean, stamp that out real quick with the napkin. Just kind of pull it back. Way too much blue groups. Again, too much blue ones for me. Well, what I'm gonna do here is I'm going to spread it around to dilute it. Excuse me. Couldn't go in here with some black. Also kinda dilute the black a little bit. Just kinda put it on there and it's going to merge a little bit. Don't worry about it. So now we're gonna go into the orange here and throw that conduct stood above as well. Over here. Little bit more orangey, little bit more orange. Skin tone. Again, you can mix in some magenta red. You have to kinda decide that as well. Again, I want to keep it a wash. So that's what makes us a little bit more a little bit more water there. And I'm using this like I was talking about. This is perfect. Little bit more water here. Alright. You're throwing the washes just kind of over. So this is a much more messy approach, but I think there's some people prefer to do it this way. I know when people draw animals at the zoo, I see them do it this way a lot. But you're gonna have to find which way works for you. I do recommend the first one because you already have that solid thing going on. And so one thing like I said, I also recommend is, well, one thing you should remember is to, again, crack is repeatedly. I mean, everybody says that but no one really does that. You need to practice a lot more than you think you do that you need to. So I'm gonna go into a little bit darker now. A little bit darker. With the black. There. I'm moving down, moving up those puddles. They're a little bit moving those buttons. You can go over here and I'm going to find the darker, the same thing over here. And kind of let that dry a bit. It's taking a little bit too much water right there. So let's let that dry for a bit. What you can do is you can have an air dry around and that can absolutely help you out. Which a lot of people do that, like having an air dryer for this. Let me let that dry. Alright. So let that dry a bit. It took me like five minutes or so just to let it dry. Now I'm gonna go in with more black and I'm going to go on with less less water. So it'd be a little bit of water, but the water to paint ratio is going to be Quite, quite less. So. Now we'll go over here and go darker than that. Dark. See the consistency of the paint is a lot thicker. And I'm going to find the highlight over here. But the highlight, it's going to be, basically it's not gonna be pure white, It's gonna be, it's gonna be just the white of the paper, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna be putting darkness around it. And that's kinda what is going to kind of make that occur, right? You're doing these steps backwards here. Over here. A little bit more water because honestly there's just way too much paint. It's like just stuck over here. A little bit, a little bit of length over here. For the top of the eye. I got a little bit more thinner, I'll say a little bit more narrow. Trying to get this black paint to do what I want, the real curve over here. And you're gonna find out that like a big part of this is really the consistency. That's gonna be the, the biggest, hardest part of all this. Then once you kinda get that, once you get used to that, it's gonna be way easier. You're going to be shocked at how easy it is once you get the consistency of the paint, right? This is already like a different kind of I like Oh, I'm going to give it a low more low eyebrows. Oh, I accidentally dipped it in blue. Forgive me. Dark blue. They're all like, what's coming out? Weird. Black. Black. I mean, it's kind of mixing with the blue there, but there. I'm going to go a little bit more of a aggressive look. And go over here and draw a line at the top of the eyelid. Different sort of like I said, a lot of this is going to come down to what kind of look you want. Do you want that more painterly look? And I'll do the one on the bottom are washes. Do you want a little bit more of a structural load on the top? And you could always go in afterwards with white colored pencil and pull it a highlight. I think that's the way most people you would do that. But again, your prerogative, It's up to you. Grab a little, little bit of orange over here and pull out a little bit of a line underneath their little too much paint. A little bit too thick there. It's kind of hard to pull it back. And so that's an issue once you once you put it down because I just wanted to even out over here. Underneath and on top as well. Yeah. Any hoop. That's the second method. You kinda more or less piling on and layering in that second method and you're going from fuzzy to a more clear and cohesive picture. So it's gonna be your decision. Which one you want. But these two ways are, you know, like the funniest ways in my opinion. Right on. Let's go to the very end here. 7. You are Amazing!: Alright, that's pretty much it. Thank you so much. I appreciate it and you getting through this journey, what I want you to do is I want you to post some of these water color eyes on the page here. And I can take a look at them. And what I'm gonna do is I'm going to reply to every single one with some feedback. Hopefully this is your first step into a larger world. Which is kind of like my goal for a lot of this stuff isn't to introduce you, but you're the one that has to take that advice and really practice it and apply it and do whatever it is that you want to do, right? You apply it to whatever it is in your life that you want to make happen. And yeah, thank you so much. I'll talk to you next time and I'll see you very soon. Don't forget, check out my other videos on here. I'm going to be putting a ton of different programs on here. It's fun and exciting to see the same people take a lot of different programs. So that is, it.