Eye Basics

The eyes are said to be the windows to the soul. To draw the eye, you have to understand a few basics about it.

Let's start with the front view of the eye. The first example to the left shows the average eye in real life. It's almond-shaped, has circular pupils, lashes above and below, and lines around the eye defining the eyeball.

To draw eyelashes, draw it outwards away from the eye and eyelid. Note that it's a bit curved.

Also, eyelashes are generally taller at the center of the eye and smaller as it goes to the ends of the eye as shown above right. (T = tall, S = small)

The side view of the eye is shown above. Notice the pupil is more elliptical or ovular than it is circular. The basic shape of the eye now looks triangular rather than almond-shaped.

The eyelashes is drawn a bit differently as well. It still curves away from the eye but the upper lashes curve upwards and the lower eye lashes move downwards. Again, the length of the lashes change from tall to short as indicated by T and S.

Most people draw eyes by drawing shapes. To make it simpler, I found that there are four basic ways of drawing eyes.

1. The first type of eye is the slit. Characters drawn with these eyes are usually older people. To draw this type eye, its' basically a single line drawn a bit upwards.
2. The second type of eye is the almond eye. These type of eyes go to a point at each end. There are two examples here to clarify that the points in the end do not have to meet and can look different even though they're in the same category.
3. The third type is the pointed end and open center. The center refers to the area of the eye closest to the center of the face. In this case, the lines of the upper and lower lid are wide apart at the center and close together at the end.
4. The fourth type is the open end and pointed center. This is the opposite of the third type. Wide at the ends and pointed near the center.

Below are various eyes with different shapes for your reference.