Before i start the eyes on a drawing, i look at many reference photos to understand what i will drawing. In the case of a tiger, i not only look at tiger photographs, but i also look at reference photographs of regular house cats. The photographs of house cats actually are more beneficial because they show much more detail than most tiger photographs, for the simple reason that you can get closer to these cats.

Lets look at the image above to get understand what we will be drawing. Just by looking at it you can see that they eye is full of textures and reflections. We won’t be adding every one of those textures but will be adding patterns and reflections that will bring it to life. What makes a good eye drawing, especially in animals, are the fine hairs that grow over the eyes. Most people don’t pay attention to these things, but you must begin to see what others don’t. These tiny details make all the difference in having a realistic looking eye and just an eye. The tiger is a beautiful because of the striped patterns that its coat has. I decided to do a tiger as main subject because it will allow me to teach you many different techniques that will not only help in this tutorial, but also in drawing all kinds of animals. Once i have covered all the important features of a tiger, i will post a whole tutorial on drawing the whole tiger using the techniques that I’m explaining. Now, Notice the fine hairs that run around the eyes and the direction that the hairs run. These hairs will be drawn using the stylus and the techniques that i have explained in my previous hair tutorials. The image below is the final drawing that i ended up with. Follow the steps, but don’t get discouraged if yours does not end up like this one. It will take time, but i guarantee that you will see results with each drawing. OK, lets begin.

Tools Used:

• Canson Bristol Vellum
• 2b Mechanical Pencil
• 2h Wooden Cased Pencil
• Color Shaper
• Kneaded Eraser
• Stylus(Empty Pen)
• Stylus(Needle Pen)
• 4b Progresso Pencil
• Paint Brush

Step 1

The paper that i used for this drawing was Canson Bristol Vellum. Its a heavier paper and its great for the techniques that we will be using today. Since you’ll be indenting with the stylus, the tick paper will make it easier. We’ll first start off my drawing the outline. The outline will consist of the the eye, the hairs around the eye and the reflections in the eye. Draw the outline using your 2b mechanical pencil, this will allow you to lightly draw it and if you need to erase, it won’t leave any marks. I have made my outline darker so you can see it. This is just a rough outline, so don’t worry about it looking good, its just a starting point.

Step 2

Now take your 2b mechanical pencil and outline the eye.The area outside this will be all black because of the shadows being cast from the area above. Now take your needle stylus and you will begin to indent the hairs that are growing just above the eye. Make sure that you overlap them and that you curve them a bit. A suggestion to make things easier is to flip the paper around to find the best position to indent. For me i find that its easier to indent down than upwards. When i have to draw hair that is growing upward, i flip my drawing upside down to indent. Play around with this so you can understand what looks good and what doesn’t. Test it out on a different sheet of paper, thats always a good method to experiment.

In this area i used the needle because the hairs are finer and will suggest single hairs. You will be indenting around the edges and nothing else. This is so that when you run your progresso 4b pencil it will show the tips of the hairs. It makes things easier to understand where things start and end. Indent in the direction that you see in the reference photo. Do the same thing to the hair below the eye. After you have indented the top and bottom, all you do is run your 4b progresso pencil over the area to reveal the hair.

Step 3

Take your progresso pencil and fill in the area around the eye, the area that was outlined on the previous step. Make sure not to press too hard. The beautiful thing about the 4b progresso pencil is that you don’t have to ad to much pressure to get it on the paper. You should layer the pencil by adding and blending with your color shaper, repeating until its dark enough. After filling the whole area around the eye, take your kneaded eraser and press it between your index finger and thumb and squeeze. This creates an edge, now with it, tap around the bottom of the eye over the dark area. This will add a highlight, this will be the bottom eye lid that will be barely visible, just enough to suggest that its there. It should look like the image on 3a. When you are tapping you will notice that you lose the edge on the kneaded eraser after a couple of taps, so you’ll have to keep making it. It will take time to control the kneaded eraser around curves. But once you get the hang of it, you will realize that its a valuable tool that can be used to produce some amazing effects.

Now take your 2h pencil and you will start to blend the corners of that highlight. The left side of the corner will blend into the above area which will be all black. So make sure you add some 2h pencil from from the top end down to about the end of the other side, not all the way. Don’t make it too dark, because this will defeat the purpose of adding the highlight and you won’t be able to see it.

Step 4

Take your 2b mechanical pencil and outline the pupil along with that highlight that will be over it. Make sure to outline lightly the highlight. These two highlights will be reflections from the surrounding area, ill explain later. Now it may not look like anything now, but once we start adding more detail you will begin to see what impact it has on the whole eye.

Step 5

Take your paint brush and cover the area around the pupil. The brush is a great tool to lay down pencil smoothly. This will be the base that we will be working on and we’ll be adding layers of detail from here on. Once you have covered the area with it, take your 4b pregresso pencil and lightly outline the bottom part of the eyeball, just above the bottom eyelid. Blend it into the surrounding area. This will suggest that the eyeball is round in shape and that there are shadows.

Step 6

Take your 4b progresso pencil and cover the are above the pupil, making sure that you outline the highlight as well. This dark part is the eyeball being shadowed by the area above it. Take your color shaper and blend dow to the bottom. This will fade it in nicely and will produce a continuous fade into the light area. I have found that if some areas don’t blend completely, you can run your 2h pencil over the area which blends it nicely. Over all this we will be adding highlights and shadows so it doesn’t have to be perfect, but enough to make it look smooth.

Step 7

We will now start to add some depth and texture on the iris. Take your mechanical pencil and make some “W” shaped lines just below the edge of the pupil. Make sure to make some longer than others. These wont go all around the whole pupil, mostly on the bottom and should be less visible as you go around to the top. The image on the left shows what they should look like. These will be just dark enough for you to see them because you will be filling them in with your 2b mechanical pencil. These will be shadows and highlights and will give the drawing so much texture and life. It sure beats having just an eyeball and pupil. These simple details makes a drawing much more interesting and gives life to your drawings. We’re not done yet with the details. Lets move on.

Step 8

Using your 2b mechanical pencil to make the grooves on the bottom of the iris. This is to suggest layers on the iris. Look at the reference photo and you will notice these layers. This will not only give realism to the eye but will add some texture. The image on the left shows the pattern that were going for. Once you have the pattern like the one on the left, make the area under the red line darker than the rest of the iris. This area will indicate a shadow. It doesn’t have to look exactly like mine, but make sure it looks random.

Now take your kneaded eraser and squeeze it between your thumb and forefinger to make an edge. With it you will be creating some highlights that extend from the center out. Just tap with the kneaded eraser which will pull from the graphite leaving a lighter line. Make a couple that run from the center out, going from the left to the right side, just like the image above.

Step 9

Take your mechanical pencil and you will start to make ‘W’ shaped patterns under the highlights that you created on the previous step. These shapes will indicate slight shadows under these highlights. It gives the drawing a bit of depth and the more patterns the eye has, the more life it will have. Once you have the outlines, slightly shade and blend them into the area below, just like the image above. One important thing is to blend everything into the surrounding areas so it flows smoothly, but not completely or else you will lose the details. TIP: user your 2h pencil to blend, yup using this pencil works great at blending darker areas into the light ones.

Step 10

You will now be adding some markings that will another layer of detail. These markings will be made using your mechanical pencil. If you look at the reference photo you will notice the dark markings that are on the iris. Some are just dark spots, but don’t make the spots too obvious by making them round. Make them and carefully blend the edges so they fade into the rest of the eye. Some look like veins, just like the dark spots, make the ends fade into the rest of the eye. If you make some that are too dark or too thick, lightly tap with your kneaded eraser to make it lighter. Don’t worry if you think you made a mistake. There are no mistakes in drawing. Again, i can’t stress it enough that your first drawing will not be the best, so don’t get discouraged. But, I guarantee that with each one you will see improvements. With each one you will understand something new and will incorporate that into your next pencil drawing.

There is just one more thing that must be done to the eye, the highlight above the eye. Take your 2h pencil and lightly shade the left side. This side will blend into the left side of the eye. You may be wondering why the highlight has that weird shape. Well, eyes are very reflective and our eyes are the same. Look at your eye really close in the mirror, you’ll probably see your reflection on your eye. Well this shape is the reflection of what’s in front of the tiger, it could be trees,fields or bushes. The white part is the sky being reflected. It adds another touch of realism that will greatly improve your drawings. In this tutorial that is the last step, but you can go on and add whatever else you want from other details that you have seen in some reference photos that you may have. From here on you will be adding the surround hair around the eye. If you want to continue, just go to the next page or click on this link Drawing Hair Around the Tiger Eye.

]]> http://www.onlypencil.com/blog/cats/drawing-realistic-tiger-with-pencil-eyes/feed/ 45 http://www.onlypencil.com/blog/tutorials/drawing-realistic-tiger-with-pencil-nose/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=drawing-realistic-tiger-with-pencil-nose http://www.onlypencil.com/blog/tutorials/drawing-realistic-tiger-with-pencil-nose/#comments Sun, 10 Aug 2008 01:57:10 +0000 onlypencil http://www.onlypencil.com/blog/index.php/archive/drawing-realistic-tiger-with-pencil-nose/ Let me start off by welcoming you back and by telling you to have fun with this tutorial and if you have any question please contact me. Lets begin, this tutorial will be a combination of different techniques that hopefully will help you improve in working with different textures such as hair. Why do i say textures? Well, that is how i see hair when i’m drawing it. Its just another texture that we are trying to capture. The tools that we will be using in this tutorial will help in achieving that. I don’t think its possible to actually draw hair, you can get it to look like hair but that’s about it. Of course you can draw a line and say that is a strand of hair, but even that is just a pencil line. What we are trying to accomplish here is trying to fool the eyes into seeing realistic hair on paper. How are we going to do that? I have mentioned in other tutorials that you can’t draw what you don’t know. So i always recommend that you first study what you will be drawing. Make it a habit and make it part of your drawing process, i can guarantee that it will be valuable in your drawing results.

On the previous tutorial,Drawing Realistic Tiger with Pencil-Chin, we focused on drawing the long hairs on the chin of a tiger. On this tutorial we will be using a combination of those techniques and other techniques to draw the hairs on the nose of a tiger. We will also look at how to add some texture to the nose. But before we begin we will look at an image of a tiger’s nose to get an idea of what we are going for. First we will understand what we want and then we will look how we will accomplish that using the tools that we have.

Well lets look at the image above. Something that i want you to notice is that the hair is layered. What do i mean by layered. Look at the part where the whiskers grow. If you look at the hair starting from the nostril and you move your way down, you will notice that each layer of hair is below the one above. If you haven’t read my other tutorials on hair, you will find out in this one that i use a stylus to produce lines what we will use to build up the hair. Using the stylus you will be indenting from the bottom up, so that the above layer overlaps the layer below. Just keep looking at the reference photo for guidance. Another thing that you will have to look at is the flow of the hair. Depending on the contours of the face and feature, it will flow in different directions. The direction that you indent will depend on the flow of the hair. Our goal with the stylus is to capture the hair highlights so that when we run the pencil over the indentations the shadows will be revealed. Ok, now lets start drawing.

Tools Used:

• Canson Bristol Vellum Paper
• 2b Mechanical Pencil
• 2h wooden cased pencil
• Color Shaper
• Kneaded Eraser
• Shami Towel
• Needle Stylus
• Pen Stylus(Make sure its completely empty!!!)
• 4b Progresso Pencil

Step 1:

We will start off drawing a rough outline of the nose. Use 2b pencil to draw it but make it light enough for you to see it. You don’t need to press hard with a 2b pencil so this way if you need to erase it won’t leave a mark. I made the outline a bit darker so you would be able to see it.

Step 2:

Now we will mark the flow of the hair, this is for guidance when using the stylus. Using the stylus,in this case the needle tip, indent around the edge of the nose down on an angle away from the nostril, in the direction of the hair flow. These lines will indicate the beginning of hair from the nostril out. When indenting here, make sure you make it a crisscross pattern and follow the flow of the hair. If you have problems just look at the reference photo at the beginning. Once you have indented around, take your progresso pencil and run it along the edge. This will reveal the indentations, bringing out the fine hairs. These little details is what makes a drawing jump out and gives it much more realism.

Step 3:

We will now do the same but this time we will do it in the section under the nose. Indent along the edges of the mouth up to the bottom of the nose in the direction of the hair flow. The area between the right side and left side, the area under the nose, will be dark because this is the area of the nose that is black and leads down to the top of the mouth. Make sure again you crisscross or else you will be left with just straight lines which will not look like hair. Once you have finished both side run your progress pencil over the edges and this will outline the hairs that will be growing over the dark area. The image on the left shows what you will be going for. These hairs will fade into the center which will add some depth and realism to the drawing. For these outlines we used the needle stylus because there is less hair in this section and the thin indentations will indicate single hairs.

Step 4:

Take your 4b progresso pencil and fill in the nostrils. This area will be obviously dark because its a dark hole. The same with the area under the nose. Actually this area under the nose is the nose itself which extends all the way to the bottom, but its dark in color so that’s why it will be black.

Step 5:

Take your other stylus(empty pen) and start to indent on the area where the whiskers are. You will be indenting from the bottom up, for the reasons that i explained at the beginning. Look at the whiskers , the area below each row of whiskers will be considered a layer of hair. By understanding this you can indent the hairs from the bottom up. Make sure that when you are indenting that you don’t do it in a straight line and in the same direction. Add some that have slight curves in either direction and others that overlap. Look at the reference image and you will notice that hairs overlap and cross each other. By doing this you are giving the drawing a more natural look. Once you have indented you can draw in with your 4b progresso pencil the areas where the whiskers will be growing from, the dark patches. These will be used for reference on where you will add the whiskers later on. Make sure you place these at the top where each layer of hair started.
Remember the edges along the nostrils that we created on the last step, well on this step you are going to blend them into the dark areas using the color shaper. Pull from the dark area out, but don’t do it too hard or else you will end up with a dark streak . Do it slowly and lightly until it blends into the black area. If you notice that the edge of the area has lost some of its darkness you can add some more graphite using your 4b progreso pencil. Keep doing this until its dark enough and the hairs have blended in nicely. One last thing to add are those curves that you see on each side of the nostrils. The area above these will be dark hair so you can make an outline using the color shaper.
If yours is not looking like my image, don’t worry about it. My goal in my tutorials is for you to understand the techniques so that you can use them on your drawings. Each time you practice, you will learn something new and in that process will improve your drawings. Pencil drawing is an ongoing learning process and these tutorials should be a start to improvement. So just have fun and experiment, if you find out that something else looks better from what im telling you, try it, go for it!!! That’s what makes drawing so much fun, the discovery of something new. OK, lets move on

Step 6:

We will now indent the whiskers using the empty pen(MAKE SURE ITS EMPTY!!!). Make sure that when you are making these that you make them have a slight curve. For example, on the left side, they would start going to the left and would then curve down, having a slight curve. Make some shorter than others and make some that overlap. Just don’t add too many. You have to make sure that you indent them in one quick motion. If you try to make them slow they will look all shaky. After you have made them you can thicken them by carefully running the empty pen over the indentations, this will increase the width of them. Something else that may be helpful is that there are different pens with different point sizes. There are some that have very fine points and some have larger points which can give you different sized indentations. What i like to do when i do whiskers is that once i have made the indentations with the pen, i take my needle stylus and continue the whisker to give the illusion that the tip is thinner than the rest of the whisker.

Ok, we now have the whiskers. Now we will start bringing out the hair by using your 2h pencil. Start by slowly and lightly outlining the bottom of each whisker, this will be the slight shadow that the whisker is making. Look at the reference photo above and you will notice that the hairs cast shadows,this is what we are going for here. The indentations makes it easier to see where you could add shadows, just don’t add them under each hair or else you will lose the illusion of a curved surface. This will come with practice, the more you draw hair, the easier it will be for you to figure out where to add these shadows so it has a natural look. Again, study reference photos and you will learn a lot from them. Here is another suggestion. If you’re drawing a lion, a tiger or any large cat, you don’t necessarily need reference photos of that specific animal. You can use also use reference photos of a regular house cat. You will be surprised at how much you can learn from these photos. Ok, back to the drawing. The area at the bottom of this section will be darker than the area in the middle because of the shadows being cast. This area is mostly white so you can’t darken it too much, just enough to suggest that there are shadow. For light shadows the best pencil grade is 2h.

Now take your 4b progresso pencil and lightly connect the dark patches where the whiskers grow. Once you have these you can lightly blend them together using your color shaper. You can blend it even more by running your 2h pencil below this area, to suggest that the the tip of the white hair gets lighter. I drew the image on the left side to show you the effect that we are going for. That all can be done with the 2h,the indentations and some shading. To add more depth and realism, take your kneaded eraser and squeeze it between your thumb and forefinger. This will create an edge on the eraser. Lightly tap the an area when you would like to make a hightlight and this will remove some of the graphite. Using this edge you can create slightly longer hairs that will go over the layers below. In that image i didn’t add any whiskers, because it was just for you to get an idea of what can be done by layering the indentations. This same technique can be used to add some highlights on this drawing we’re working on using the kneaded eraser.

One last thing to do in this part is to darken the area above those two curves on each side of the nostrils. This area will be the orange color that a tiger has on its fur. So it has to be darker than the white hair.

Step 7:

We will now begin working on the nose. This part is all about adding texture to give the nose realism. Before we go on, notice on the reference image how the hair on top of the nose overlaps the nose. We will now add this hair by indenting across the top of the nose. Again, make sure you indent in a random pattern, crisscrossing and overlapping. For now we will now just do this and will come back later to fill in the rest of that part. Now, take your color shaper and run it lightly all over the whole nose which will give it a light gray shade. The center of the nose will have a groove that runs from the middle of the nose and runs down to the bottom of the nose. The image on the left shows the what the nose looks like. The bottom part will be dark because that part is black in color and the shadows that are being cast. We have now added the base which is a slight gray color which we will build on. Over this you will add the dark markings. You can add them randomly or you can place them like i have done. Make these marks using your 4b progresso pencil. I use this pencil because you don’t have to press too hard to get a deep dark shade. You can make these markings any shape you want, just don’t make it look like its patterned, make it random. The bottom of the nose will now be blended with the color shaper. Take your shaper and pull the dark graphite from the bottom up. This will pull some graphite into the light section, from here just blend that into the surrounding area. Remember there is a groove running down the middle, so this groove will be dark and will fade out from the center out, therefore you should blend that too.

Step 8:

Take your 4b progresso pencil and start to darken the bottom of the nose. Slowly build on it by adding some pencil and blending with your color shaper. Make sure not to darken all the way to the top as the top will be hit by some light and its pink in color. Blend the dark patches into the surrounding area by pulling in circles around the patch. This will nicely blend the ones that are close together and will also blend into the rest of the nose. Remember, if after you use the color blender you pull too much graphite and the dark areas lose some of their darkness, you can always darken them with your 4b pencil.

Step 9:

This is next part for the nose is optional. I like to add textures to my drawings so i decided to add some dots using the empty pen. This will give the nose a rougher look and will suggest that its not smooth. You can leave it the way you have it now and just darken the edges so show contours and shadows. If you decide to use the texture, all you have to do is slowly press the pen on the paper in a tapping motion. Make sure that you make it random, but don’t cover the whole nose with dots. I mostly added this to the top section of the nose and added a few as you got closer to the bottom of the nose. Once you finished doing that you, you run your progresso pencil over the nose lightly, this will reveal the lighter dots. At first it might look weird, but once you start to blend them with your color shaper, you will notice that it adds a special touch to the overall look of the nose. If the dots are too noticeable, you can always use your kneaded eraser to pull some dark graphite.
We will now move to the section above the nose. Take you your needle stylus and start indenting on the area above the nose. I suggest you start indenting from the bottom up as the hair in this area is layered. Make sure that you make it as random as possible. But, remember that the indentations have to be close because this will be finer hair. Don’t make the indentations too long either because this area is covered in short hair. Crisscross them,curve them and overlap them. The way i like to do this is go from left to right and slowly move up until you get to the top. This might take a while to complete so be patient.
What is the purpose of indenting? Well, as i have mentioned before, you should study what you will be drawing before you actually start. After a while of studying and understanding how hair behaves and looks up close, you will start to see patterns in your indentations. By recognizing these patterns you will understand where to fill in the blanks to bring out the realist hair. The indentations are the hairs and the area not indented would be the dark shadows that the hairs cast. Don’t worry if you don’t get it the first time around. This will take you a while to understand and see, but when you do you will know that you got it by the results that you get.
Back to the drawing. Once you have completed the indentations, one neat trick to reveal the lines is to use a shami towel. Just add some graphite to the towel by taking your 4b pencil and user it on a different sheet of paper. Rub that area with the shami towel and this will add some graphite to it. Once you have some graphite on the towel, take it and rub the area that you have indented. It should now look something like the image above. Note that the top area will be darker than the area below, because the area that is close to the nose will have some white hair.

Step 10:

Start by darkening the area with your 4b progresso pencil. The outer edges will be darker because this part will curve down. Think of the nose as a cylinder where the middle of the nose is closest to you and you get closer to the sides its curves. Well since its curving, this area will be darker. By doing this you give the illusion of curves and depth. If after running the progresso pencil you notice that the lines are too noticeable. You can darken them by blending them with the color shaper. This will darken the lines, but in the process will remove some of the dark areas that you added with the progresso pencil. You will have to keep adding more pencil and shading to get the right results. Now take your 2b mechanical pencil and start to look for certain patterns. You are looking for shadows that the hair will be creating. And how will you know? Well the shadows will be the areas that have not been indented. Fill in these areas with your mechanical pencil, basically you’ll be outlining some hairs. Don’t do it all over, just pick some areas to suggest shadows and clumps of hair. This will take time to understand and to do, but you will get the hang of it as you draw more hair and study photographs of hair. To get the illusion of hair clumps, you take your kneaded eraser and you tap on some indentations. Look at the image on the left; that image shows indentations without adding these clumps of hair. If you leave it the way it is, it will look flat, it still looks like hair but it can still be improved. Now look at the image on the right. In this one i have removed some graphite along some of the indentations which gives the illusion of several hairs clumping together. I then outlined this clump and shaded from the top down. Its the same sketch just that i added this tiny details which made a big difference. As you can see, these simple details will give your drawings much more realism. Play around with it and see what you can come up with.

Step 11:

Its basically done, from here on you can add fine details to make it look better, like the lip under the nose which was covered in the previous tiger tutorial. You can darken the hair above the by adding 4b pencil and blending it with your color shaper. Outline the top of the nose which will bring out the hair that overlap that area. I also added the some hair on each side of the nose, which is the same technique that i used for the rest of the nose. Don’t be discouraged if yours doesn’t look like it mine. What i want you to understand is the technique and for you to practice it. Here is a good way to practice. Choose a section from the reference image above and try to draw it using the techniques that i have talked about. Keep practicing, that is the only way that you will improve. I can tell you that my first drawings were not even close to the ones that i draw now, and there is no magic trick to get them to look good. Its all about wanting to improve and having the passion for drawing. Well i hope you enjoyed this tutorial and if you have any questions please contact me. If you found it helpful please share this tutorial.

A couple of days ago i was working on a section of a drawing where i need to add pencil that faded out lightly. In order to put pencil down smoothly on paper i have used a chamy towel which works great, but is not that good for tight corners. This towel works great for large areas. While working on that drawing i thought of using my paint brushes. I thought it was crazy but thought it might just work if i tried it. So i looked for the brushes and finally found them. I put down some pencil on a separate piece of paper to test it out. I then started brushing over it with the brush and to my amazement it blended beautifully. Just like that i had a new tool to work with. But it didn’t end there. I thought to myself that when i painted i would put the paint in the palette and would dip my brush in the color that i needed. So my crazy mind came up with the idea of rubbing my 6b progresso pencil over some sand paper to make some pencil dust. I collected this dust in a small container and whenever i needed to blend an area, i could just dip the brush over the dust. Of course you have to make sure that if you want to blend light lightly, you have to either use the brush without using too much dust or remove some of the dust by brushing on a separate piece of paper. You don’t have to use a 6b pencil, you can use whatever pencil you have or want. You can also use the pencil shavings that you get when you sharpen your pencils. Watch the video below to get an idea on how it can be used.

Take a look at the pupil(the black area in the center), this area contracts in size when light hits it. The area around the pupil is the iris, this is the area that gives us our eye color. As you can see its not just a blotch of brown, its made up highlights and shadows and this is what we will concentrate on. Adding the right shadows and highlights gives they eye depth and life. All eyes are different and you will see that adding different highlights in different areas gives different effects. The white dot close to the eye is the reflection of light source, it can be big or large, it depends if the person is indoor or outdoor. Another thing you must take into consideration is the shape of the eye. The surface of the eye is not flat, it has a curve to it. So taking that into consideration when drawing highlights will give the eye much more dimension. These are the tools that i used

Tools Used:

• 2h wood cased pencil

• 2b 0.5 Mechanical Pencil

• Kneaded Eraser

• Color Blender

• Smooth Bristol Paper

This is the final drawing of what we’ll be working on. I’ll try to give a detailed explanation of the whole process that i use. Again, study the picture above to get an idea of what you’ll be drawing. It will make much more easier and with time you will understand how to take the same steps yourself. With the same process try to draw the eye above so that you can practice.

Step 1

Well we will start by drawing the outline, this can be a fast sketch, but enough detail to show the shape. I used 2b 0.5mm mechanical pencil. Make sure you don’t make the outline too dark or else you will have an outline in the end. The three round circles close to the pupil will be light source reflections.

Step 2

Start by filling in the pupil using the 6b progresso pencil. Make sure not to press too hard or else you will not be able to erase it easily if you need to. One good way to get really darks is to layer it. Start off by lightly going over with with the progresso pencil and then use the the color blender to blend it. Add another layer of pencil with progresso and do the same with blender. Keep on doing this until you are satisfied with it.

Step 3

Take your 4b progresso pencil and put down some graphite on a separate piece of paper. Get it as dark as possible, then with your color blender lightly rub that area. Now if you look at the tip of blender you will see that it has some graphite. Now rub the area around the the wobbly circle. If you don’t a have a color blender you can use a tortillon/shading stump. I would recommend that you have both of these tools, they can be helpful in achieving different effects.

Step 4

Using your mechanical pencil draw the lines that you see around the area that was shaded previously, try to make them quick and light. If they are random, it would be much better. These lines will serve as a guide of highlights and shadows that the iris has. From the reference picture of the eye above, you can see that the iris is full of highlights and shadows.

Step 5

Using your mechanical pencil lightly fill in the area around the pupil. Then with with the blender blend from the center of the pupil out. This will also pull some darks from the center of the pupil, giving that area some shadows.

Step 6

The area outside of the iris layered under the rest of the iris, adding these shadows gives the iris much more depth. Lightly draw them under and blend them with the rest of the dark area. You don’t have to put shadows all the way around, just on random areas.

Step 7

Using your blender pull from the edge of the inner area outside. This will give a nice pattern and will be a guide for the highlights and shadows on the outer area. Make sure you don’t shade the highlights or else you will lose them. You can always erase those areas after so they wont be as bright. You can now begin to see the eye come to life, layering is a big part of pencil drawing and learning what goes on top and bottom is very important. It might take a while to go through all these steps, but the time pays off in the end. After practicing, it will become much easier with each one.

Step 8

Draw around the whole iris with the 4b progresso pencil, don’t press too hard. This will outline the whole iris. Take your kneaded eraser between your index finger and your thumb then squeeze. This will give the kneaded eraser a fine edge. You will use this to pull some highlight from the area outside of the pupil. Make the highlights going around the area, don’t add too many, just enough that they stand out. If you pull too much graphite, just add more with the pencil, blend it with blender and use kneaded eraser again. You will probably need to make new edge on eraser after each time you pull graphite because it will stick to the edge. If you don’t, next time you try to make a highlight it will not pull as much graphite. These little erasers are amazing and all pencil artists should have them in their tools.

Step 9

Now blend the area that you outlined on the previous step. If its not dark enough just put down more pencil and blend it, it should look like the image above. On the previous step we pulled out some highlights with the kneaded eraser. Now randomly darken between some of those highlights using your mechanical pencil. This will bring out some of the highlights much more and will also add some shadows. Outline the edges of that area, this will make it stand out. Using your blender blend the edge of the pupil with the area outside. Don’t blend it too much, just enough so the end of the highlights blend out nicely.

Step 10

Using your progresso pencil draw out that shape that you see on the image above, it doesn’t have to look exactly, but it should be random. Don’t draw the outline too dark, just enough for you to see it. Darken the area below that outline, don’t make it too dark that it will stand out too much from the rest of the iris. Blend it just a bit in some areas so that it blends a bit into the rest of the iris.

Step 11

Using your kneaded eraser add some highlights around the outer iris. These highlights will be larger than the ones in the center. You can also make some that start from the outer edge of the pupil to the end of the iris, but don’t make too many of these.

Step 12

On the previous step we added highlights going straight down, here you will add highlights with kneaded eraser in an angle. You’ll be making “W” shaped highlights, just make enough that it will give the iris some texture. After making these highlights, you will add shadows, under some of these highlights. In the image above you can see a very clear “W”, below that you can see a darker area, this will be the shadow for this highlight. Add these shadows to some of the highlights around the iris, not all of them, make it as random as possible. Using your color blender, blend the ends of the these highlights so they don’t look like white lines. In this step we will also start working on the sclera, which is the white part of the eye. The tip of the color blender should still have some graphite, so use that to put down some graphite around the sclera like the image above. The two circles that you see on the right side will be highlights that will suggest wetness.

Step 13

Taking your mechanical pencil, darken the shadows around the edge of the iris. Add some dark lines in between some of the highlights for so the highlights can jump out more. In this step you can also experiment with highlights, add more or take away. We now have the basic design for the iris, from here on we can start to darken the whole iris by adding light layers of graphite using 2h pencil. If you’re drawing and eye that is blue, green or light in color, you would leave it like this. We also shaded the fold thats under the eyebrow and above the eyelash. Using your kneaded eraser you can erase between the glare spots to blend them together.

Step 14

Here we will darken the iris. Before we do that we will add some eyelash reflections, you don’t have to add this to all your drawings, but if the drawing is big enough you can. Over the 3 glare spots you can draw some eyelash reflections. The reflection from eyelashes would be reflected on the surface of the eye, since the glare spots are at the top and are white you can draw over them the tips of the eyelashes. Once you have done this, you lightly put down a layer with the 2h pencil over the whole iris. This will darken the highlights, darken the top section of the iris a bit more because this part will be a bit more darker because of shadows of the top of the eye and eyelashes. I added some other details like the reflections on the corner of the eyes. With the 2h pencil i also added some light blood vessels that run out from the corners of the eye. These little details make a big difference in drawing a realistic eye. Look at the reference photo at the beginning so you can see those blood vessels. Darken the sclera, the white part of the eye a bit with the blender, especially the corners. This will give the eye more depth and realism with the subtle blood vessels.

Step 15

The eyelashes are added, take a look at the angle that they are drawn, they are not drawn straight down,except for the ones in the center. These are drawn last because they are on top of the of the other features. Using your kneaded eraser you can add some highlights,which would be some hairs reflecting some light. You can play around with them to get a much realism. Just make sure you make sure to curve them, they are not straight. The ones in the center don’t have much of a curve because you’re looking straight at them.

Step 16

We will add now the lower eyelashes, these should be a bit lighter so you can use a 2h pencil to draw them or use the mechanical pencil and then use an edged kneaded eraser to tap along the hair to remove some graphite. Like the top eyelashes, the center ones curve down and you go either left or right so you start to see the curve on the hair.

Well that is about it, it might seem long but with time you will be drawing them with ease. Don’t worry if the first time it doesn’t come out right, keep practicing and you will see results. The more you draw it, the more you will understand each step and it will become much easier. Don’t be scared to experiment, study the reference eye and look at the features. Using the same tools that were used try different ways to put down those details. Be creative with the process, before you know it you’ll your eyes will be glistening and staring at you .

Conclusion

This tutorial should be only the first step, one thing i can tell you is that the more you draw the better you will get. I won’t stop reminding that you should study whatever you’re drawing. Understanding what you are drawing is so helpful and the end results will show the preparation. Hopefully this tutorial was helpful, if you have any problems or have any questions, leave a comment or contact me.

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