Surely you have come this far because you are interested in knowing how to draw a realistic eye in pencil. Although a priori it seems to be a very difficult drawing to achieve, it is not so much. So, to encourage you, I bring you this step-by-step tutorial, as well as the video so that you can enjoy it and do it slowly. In this way they will achieve very good results in a short time.
Video of how to draw an eye
I’m going to start with the tutorial in video format, so that first of all you see it from end to end. In this way you will have the whole picture of the development of the drawing, and incidentally several parts will be memorized. But there is never anything in the head. So, once you see the video, you can see the step by step that I will put below so that you can see it, and when something is not clear to you, you put the video back and you are watching. Regarding the video, you would help me a lot if you subscribe to my channel, and so you will see all the tutorials that I upload.
Step by step tutorial to draw the eye
I hope you have watched the video well. Now I am going to show you step by step the path you must follow.
First, to get an idea of the scale you are going to work with, you have to make a circle. The diameter of the circle is going to be approximately the total length of your eye.
If you are a beginner in drawing, it may not be easy for you to make a circle by hand. Nothing happens either starting with instruments. In other words, you can start your eye by drawing a circle with the compass.
– Starting to trace eye
After the circle, you have to continue making a straight line that goes a little lower than the center of the circle. That line is going to be the axis of your eye drawing.
From there you can start drawing what will be the eye contour, following the shape more or less as you see in the drawing above. This shape is quite modifiable, because each eye has a different shape. The one I have made is drawn without any reference. You can take a photo of an eye as a reference to make your base trace. Do not forget that the shape is not symmetrical, since on one side you have the tear, which protrudes outside the circle you made at the beginning.
– Completing eye drawing
When you have the previous step completed, you can erase the lines that you put of reference, in such a way that the drawing goes clean.
From there you have to finish assembling the base of the drawing. The first thing you are going to do is the circle of the iris of the eye, that is, the part of color that has an eye. For you to have a reference, it is approximately half the total length of the eye removing the tear. That is, you can draw a line under the eye from the inside of the tear to the opposite side of the eye. You mark half, and half of each half. These last two marks will be the diameter of your iris.
Once you have the iris, you must make the pupil, which is the black part of the eye. It is a concentric circle with the previous one, and the size can be variable. If you observe the behavior of an eye, you will see that it is like a camera: depending on whether more or less light enters it, the pupil is smaller or larger.
In addition to this, you will draw, as you see in my drawing, an area that will be a sparkle in the eye, which later helps your drawing to acquire great realism.
Start coloring eye drawing
Until the previous step we practically finished the drawing phase, adding a line above the eye that will be the crease of the eye, and another line near the bottom edge of the eye.
Hence what follows is to start giving it realism through the shading of the different areas. This is where you have to practice a lot to get good results. You will have a good drawing when you are able to make color surfaces of different intensities, and especially when you can create very smooth and subtle gradients, since that is what you see in reality.
At the beginning of the coloring, we begin by painting the pupil with a strong black, with a small area a little lighter, since this way we are going to achieve a gloss effect on it.
– Shading iris of eye
We start working with the iris. A smooth layer should be made as even as possible. Always a little scratched. With more practice, it is smoother. Anyway you can use a blur to make everything more even. If you don’t have a smudger, you can do it with your own finger or even with a little paper or cotton.
On youtube you can see tutorials also to make home blurrs.
Going back to our drawing, once you have an even base, you start creating gradients with the darkest part towards the outer edge of the iris.
– Completing the iris
The rest of the iris work can be done in different ways. I tell you what I did in this case: first I have created a kind of rounded star around the pupil, and then I have been creating spots inside that star. Then I have made some spots on the outside and reinforced the darkness on the outside of the iris. Another way to make the iris is directly with concentric lines of different intensity.
– Continuing with the eye
With the iris finished, we are going to finish the inner part of the eye. To do this we start with the lacrimal, which consists of areas of light and shadow as you can see in the illustration above. After this you start to paint what would be the white part of the eye. You have to give it a very soft tone, being darker towards the ends. This will give realism to the eye, since we will perceive a rounded shape, just as the eye is in reality. We also have to think that the eyelid is separated from the eye, so it shades the eye on the inside. So we will be marking that shadow inside the eye produced by the eyelid.
Draw outside of eye
Now we are going to advance on the external part of the eye. We begin by painting the entire exterior area smoothly and as evenly as possible, so that it serves as a basis for the next job.
Then we will highlight the crease of the eye. Here we also have to demonstrate skill in working gradients. The fold is not a sharp line, but a dark area that gradually clears up and down. That line, in the area that goes to the tear, becomes a couple of wrinkles that contribute to the realism of the final image.
Next thing is to do the same job in the lower eye area. We also have to work with gradients to give an impression of roundness in the part under the lower eyelid, with well-marked wrinkles.
Last step is the placement of the eyelashes. In the case of my drawing, you could put many more, that is, leave the eyelash area more populated, but there you can see the final result of the drawing.
I encourage you to practice a lot. I already tell you that it is difficult for you to get it right the first time, but in the drawing, patience is the most important thing.
Tell me in the comments how the drawing turned out, and I invite you to continue visiting the page in Pencil Drawing to see many other interesting tutorials.
