By Tissa Hewavitarane

How to draw and paint eyes

After practising frontal and profile sketches of human faces, we now move on to drawing and painting eyes and ears. Drawing the eye is not as difficult. As with all facial features with eyes there is a great variety without which we would be a pretty boring lot. The illustration on this page cover both sexes and of different age groups.

The actual shape of most eyes is rather like a tear drop laid on one side. The common factor we see is the duct at the inner corner of each eye. Fig. 1 shows a close up of an eye in different shapes. Notice the difference in eyelids. They can be thick, thin, heavy, bulging or hardly visible. The lower lid usually shows a rim from which fine lashes sprout.

Females have pretty pair of eyes, and they can enhance their long lashes with make-up. This helps to eyes a bit easier. When drawing eyes remember to leave a white spot on the pupil. This reflects light which gives life to an eye. Try to sketch various eye shapes from Fig. 1 then add lids and lashes.

The eyes in Fig. 2 is of a young male model. See on the top view how the hair of the eye brow has been drawn, fine lines running the way actually grows. The upper eye lid extends on either side beyond the surface of the eyeball. The lashes curve gently up from the top lid, but are sparse on the lower one. The tear duct can just be seen at the inner end of the eye. The middle sketch in Fig. 2 will give you more clues on how to draw eyelashes.

The bottom view of a closed eye shows the fringe lashes and how the shut lid is sketched as two thin lines. The eye brows also pulls down nearer to the eye.

Study the Fig. 3. When we become older it all changes. Your teen observation will take in the bags, lines, straggly eye brows and thinning lashes. Copy these in pencil using thin and thick lines. Then go over with a fibre-tip pen, so that you will see what each medium does.

In painting eyes a light pale colour is applied according to their skin textures. Watercolour painting has a pattern that must always be respected.

The lighter colour must be applied first and the dark colour to outline the highlights. Fig. 4 show you the skin texture in colour and position of the eyes, between the eyes and ears.