How To Draw An Eye From The Side

Hello, I'm Di Roberts from the Insight School of Art, and I'm going to show you some simple drawing exercises and I hope you enjoy them. I'm going to show you how to draw an eye from the side. Don't think almond shape at all.

Try to avoid almond shape, unless you are Egyptian. The Egyptians very quickly drew this shape whether the eye was at front, the side, or even upside down. That would be the Egyptian way of drawing an eye, and it's not accurate.

If you are drawing an eye from the side, you need to think triangle as a basic shape, and then round it out. So, start with the triangle, round out the front, and you'll find if you look at the person, at the human being, the eyelids actually wrap around. So the eyelid appears something like that, and also the lower lid wraps around a little bit.

As you see, we've got the nose here, it'll all become clear. Because the eyelid wraps around, that gives an impression of depth and we can shade in this area here. And shade this line to display an idea of depth.

Get rid of that dark line and you can blend with your finger to soften up and the same underneath, just to give the idea of roundness. Remember that the eye is a little bit similar in shape to a tangerine and therefore takes up a lot of space within the scale. There's a lot of eye socket there and all we see is the very small part of the front in the opening between the eyelids.

The iris, the colored part of the eye, is a circle from the front but from the side, we'll see it as an elliptical shape. This is just about visible at the bottom and disappears up to the top. So in fact, it's hidden, it's under the eyelid at the top there.

And the pupil would be in the center of the iris, and we might not see the complete circle because obviously, it's going around the back. Pupil is very, very dark, so use your softest pencil or use quite a bit of pressure to darken it all. And think shadows.

There's a shadow cast from the eyelid onto the top of the iris. This is going to be quite dark, and we'll continue down, over the white of the eye until the corner. Some people have got a strange little shape at the side of the eye.

The tear duct, remember, is on the other side by the nose, but sometimes where the two pieces of flesh meet you might find there are some creases, these little details, and you'll only know by looking. Don't make a tip, have a good at who you are drawing or from the image that you are working from. Let's continue to shade around the sides to soften it all up.

Now coming out from the pupil lines, radiate out to the edges of the iris. Think of a bicycle with the spokes coming out. And let's leave an area of light just about here, to make it look more interesting and a bit more realistic.

So that's the starting point to shade the iris. Now, we can come in from the edge. Smooth over those lines depending on whether the eye is blue, grey, brown or even black.

You'll still see quite a lot of light. A light eye oversees, the shading will be lighter, it'll still be visible but will be a lot lighter. And the dark of the eye, the more you can work into it, always make sure the pupil is a lot darker.

Sometimes, you can see a ring of dark along the edge of the iris. Sometimes, you can see an inner ring that's reflecting other things. And finally, we have some eyelashes.

I'm just going to smooth this a bit because, obviously, a curved eye is going to get darker to its side to give the impression of being round, not just a flat shape. Okay, eyelashes come out from the edge of the eyelid as it touches the white of the eye or the iris. Just a bit of buffing, so really from this point here, very random, very loose, and coming towards the nose.

Loose lines, some of them, you can press on a bit harder around the front. And you can even see one or two very small ones going around the back. Same down here, let's get rid of that line and make it into an eyelash.

And just randomly, v