In this tutorial I show you how you can simply draw eyes that glow a lot and sparkle. The tutorial is a bit longer because I show you simply also how I drew the character in short steps. But in the end I will summarize how you can just use the few important steps on any of your digital drawing.

1. Draw your character

This step is simple. Just draw what you want to draw, you also can paint.

 

Here I lined my character with a simple marker brush

Now erase your sketch layer and use the fill bucket UNDER your Line-layer to fill in the background.

Now make another layer under your background layer and use bucket tool to fill flat colors.

 

This way you don't need a clipping group or the selection tool and you will still not draw over your background ;)

 

Hint:

Use bright colors for your character's eyes. Regardless if the eyes are darker, use a lighter color (light blue, for red use pink, light brown, light green, or bright yellow)

Now go to your background layer and add a new one as clipping group and draw a background you'd like to have.

 

Hint:

The glowing eyes will work better with a bright shiny background!

 

 

2. The shading

Now start shading your character. I use a marker tool and draw very fast . It doesn't have to be super clean if you don't want to do full hard cell shading because you will blend it afterwards anyway.

 

Make on top of your flat colors layer another layer on multiply and pick a brownish color for a warm shading.

 

Draw a curve in the middle of each eye, also follow the round lines just like on the picture.

Now fill in the upper part of the eyes

Now slightly blend over the edges with the blending tool.

Now pick a slightly darker color than your shading color and draw another curve in the middle of the eyes and follow the edges again, but now you'll do it on top.

 

This time, don't fill in the upper part.

Now blend over slightly again and adjust the shading layer. I like more contrast so I go to

 

Edit->Color Correction-> Brightness/Contrast

Now with more contrast.

3. The glow

Make a new layer under your background layer and set it on multiply.

Draw over your whole character with a huge pen or use the lasso-fill tool. You'll see that your character becomes much darker.

 

Hint:

 

The color of your shading looks best if it suits your overall background color.

 

Brown/orange-> Orange shiny background, Purple -> blue sky as background

Add a new layer above and put it on "Add (glow)"

 

Pick a bright blue color if your character has blue eyes and draw some dots. Now you can already see how it'll shine!

Pick a more vibrant color like Purple/Pink/Golden yellow/bright blue and draw with a marker inside the top of the eyes and blend it down.

Now make a new Add(glow) layer on top of ALL of your layers and pick a soft airbrush and a bright blue color.

Turn the density of your brush down a bit and use a size that is slightly bigger than the eyes and just draw slightly above. Now it'll glow!

 

Hint:

 

If you want a stronger glow you can either use full density or you can duplicate this layer.

Go on your lineart layer for your eyes and create a clipping mask over. Now Pick the shading color of the hair and use a pen to draw over the parts that are hidden by hair. Lower the density to 50.

Now go back under your background layer and create New layer -Add (glow) and draw highlights on your character and the edges to make your character stand out more

Add tons of tiny sparkles inside of the eyes

And that's it!

 

Now you can compare if you want to keep the dark version or if you like the brighter version more.

 

This is the current version we have.

This is the one if you remove the multiply layer where you drew over your whole character.

Optional:

 

Save your picture as PNG and re-open it.

Adjust the colors, saturation and contrast and if you want it blurry, duplicate your layer and go to Filter->Blur-> Gaussian Blur on 30 and then lower the density of your layer.

 

I hope this tutorial was helpful. Now you're able to create tons of sparkling eyes.

 

 

Summary for short:

 

-Draw a character with flat colors and shades under your background layer

-add a layer on top on add(glow) and use a huge soft brush to draw slightly over the eyes

-add another glow-layer on top and draw highlights