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Wednesday, January 24, 2018

The Human Eye




As an artist with little experience, but natural talent, I have never had the chance to find a drawing technique that I thought best fit me. I would simply just draw what I saw, and I couldn't help people that came to me for drawing advice. I want to focus on the human face and its parts. To begin I chose the human eye, and I modeled the drawing off of this picture:

See the source image

The book I chose to aid me in finding good techniques is called How to Draw Cool Stuff  by Catherine Holmes. I was compelled by the interesting cover photo that the book provided. There are 6 chapters, each with different things to learn. I will be working in chapter 2, which covers the human face and its parts. The author explains what the artist needs to know and understand, and therefore can do. It then follows up with a step-by-step guideline to drawing the shape. Holmes explains how to draw the human eye in simple terms by stating, "The average human eye can be created by using standard guidelines/measurements" (60). As I stated before, I never learned a technique that I could confidently say I had, however Holmes makes the drawing easy to understand, therefore, easy to draw. She explains the process in simple steps, (I unfortunately forgot to take a picture of the beginning of my drawing), first starting with a circle (61).

This book focuses on finding the simple shapes within complex drawings. After following the guidelines I ended up with this finished product:

The lashes are messy and so is my shading, however I believe the book guided me quite well. I started with a simple circle (the iris), and continued to add lines (any creases, the pupil, etc.), then all that was left was to shade! I believe the drawing turned out very pretty! 

Do you have a specific technique for drawing the human eye? If so, let me know! Or if you don't, was this helpful, and can I clarify anything?

Book citation:
Holmes, Catherine. How to Draw Cool Stuff. Library Tales Publishing, Inc., 2013.



6 comments:

  1. Hey Jordan, your drawing looks amazing! The detail of the lashes and how clustered they are really shows through with the lines you made. I don't really have a specific way to draw eyes, but wanted to know what your technique was, did you start with a basic shape of a circle and went there? Or did you do a rough sketch and fix it from that point?

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    1. Thank you! I started by drawing a circle (the entire iris), and then going from there. I forgot to take pictures of the beginning of steps of my drawing and I definitely regret that.

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  2. Great eye Jordan! could you clarify on why you decided not to make an eyebrow for the eye just wondering. Do you erase or just didn't drawn on the iris to give it that empty white space that represents the reflection of the moon.

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    1. Thank you Philip! I decided not to make the eyebrow because my main focus was on the eye, however I plan on drawing an entire face soon and of course I'll be drawing them. And I erased inside the iris to give it that moon shape

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  3. Hey Jordan! Amazing job on your drawing, it looks incredibly realistic. I really like how your shading works so well together, I can easily tell the different pieces apart. As for your question, I don't really have a technique for drawing eyes I just do the standard face lines to give me an idea of where the eyes would be, then draw full circles, and then fill in the details from there. Would you say drawing eyes are difficult? If so how do you work around it? If not are some tips for drawing eyes?

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    1. Thank you Anthony! I personally love drawing eyes, they are the windows to the soul and I love attempting to capture the beauty on paper. As for difficulty, I think eyes are about easy-medium level, that goes for getting the correct shape. One tip I would suggest relates to the reflection one sees I the eyes, if you want the reflection to be super strong then draw that shape, and never shade in it, it will give a really strong white color. The other way would be drawing everything, then erasing the reflection. This is personally what I prefer :)

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