A (really bad) Eye Tutorial

I've been asked before how I paint eyes. It's actually a very easy process that I developed watching a bunch of other artists paint eyes and combining their methods to suit me. I thought I'd share a few pictures and tips.

Most of this is done with the wet on dry technique in watercolor. If you want to add in the splatters of color I usually have, you'd do wet on wet and just kind of go crazy. There's no rhyme or reason to splatters.

First, I start with line art, I like to use very light pencil lines or sometimes water soluble pencils. I decide where the light is hitting the eye and block out the spaces I'd like to keep white. Then I decide on the color I'd like to have peaking through. This isn't usually the color that the eye itself will be. In this case I chose a golden yellow.

Then you want to start with your lightest shade of the main color of the eyes (in this case green). Put that around the edges and using a wide, thin brush (of if you're doing smaller eyes, a very thin, pointed brush) and push the color up toward where the pupil will be. You do the same thing again with a darker shade of the main color. If you think you're covering up too much of the yellow, just throw in a couple lines of yellow and you're good. You'll want to do one last shade of green, very dark, around the edge and have a few thin lines of that throughout the iris. As you're coloring it's okay if you get a few lines in your blocked out white area, it'll add dimension to the supposed light in the eyes.

After you do the iris, paint the pupil in. After you fill in your pupil, you'll want to bleed a SMALL amount of black into the iris.

Then you'll want to add shadowing to the iris.I just do this black on the very top, bleeding it into the pupil, and then add a few thin lines of black here and there.

Line the eye with a VERY light shade of pink, add in even lighter lines of pink on the whites of the eye to add depth, as well as light shading at the top of eye.

Then you just give her a lid and paint in the lashes. Make sure you put it on the edge of the pink line on the bottom lash. And do the lashes very very very last. Not only because it's most likely going the be one of the darkest things on your painting, but also because it's a pretty satisfying way to end your painting.

And there you go, a decently simple way to paint somewhat realistic eyes.

Love love love!

Kait