The Video Tutorial on YouTube

Part 1 - Anatomy

Regardless of the art style, without a proper understanding of the eyes, all you do is mindless pattern recognition, which is not exactly the most ideal way to learn. You want to draw the eyes, so, what do we need to know about the eyes?

The Eyelashes

This is the eyelashes, it’s crucial in the sense that we usually use it to define the shapes of the eyes. I’ll talk more about that in a bit. Let’s use a generic one as an example for the time being.

The Eyeball

The eyeball consists of iris, pupil, sclera and cornea.

The Iris

This is the iris, the coloured part of the eye.

This is the most interesting part because of its complicated nature.

Essentially, it’s an intricate web of nerves and muscles.

2 parts - the inner pupillary zone (blue) and the outer ciliary zone (red)

The collarette divides the pupillary zone and the ciliary zone.

Here are the common patterns that you may see on the iris in real life.

Crypts of Fuchs - the almond-shaped holes

Contraction furrows - pale lines curving around the pupil

Wolffin nodules - a circular ring of bright spots on the iris

Pigment spots - dark spots that appear randomly on the iris

The patterns are unique to everybody. Artists don’t usually use all the patterns or features at the same time.

The intricacy of the anatomy also precipitates artists to simplify the iris, and it allows a lot of creativity.

The Pupil, Sclera and Cornea

Inside the iris, lies the circular, black pupil in the centre.

On top of it, is the cornea. If you look at the eyes from the side, this thin transparent layer.

This is what causes the strong iconic white highlight. Also, it’s wet.

Outside, is the sclera, the white part. Usually, I don’t use a hard, dark line to delineate the edge. Owing to the fact that it’s the extension of the cornea, I put highlights across them from time to time.

Notice some artists like to draw the dark limbal ring on the inside of the outer edge of the iris, providing a sharp contrast between the iris and the sclera.

The Lacrimal Caruncle

This is the pink, globular flesh located at the inner corner of the eye.

Artists don’t usually draw this but you can. Or you may hint at it by painting a pink corner.

The Eyelids

we use a line for the crease to indicate the upper eyelid. It can be monolid if you don’t draw anything.

Depending on the angles, we may see the top plane of the lower eyelid. And I like to use a thin shade to indicate that.

The upper eyelid covers the eyes, and the “eye” that we see is just a very small portion of it. The part underneath the eyelid pops out, catching light.

The Eyebrow

The protruding brow bone cast a shadow on the eyelid.

Part 2 - the Types of Eyes

Eye shape is a combination of several metrics, not just one thing. And these metrics are a spectrum. I use 3 metrics - shape, size, position.

Metric 1 - the Shape

Shape-wise, it can be generalized as almond vs round.

To be more specific, it’s about the angles.

Normally we use the caruncle as the anchor. Since we don’t draw that. Draw a horizontal line across the eye instead. Try to use the pupil as the centre.

Notice how the outer corner of the eye is positioned in relation to the pupil, it’s standard when it’s slightly above the centre.

 

When you bend the eyelashes, so much so that the outer corner is lower than the pupil, it becomes rounder, called a downturned eye, and resembles a gentler character.

As opposed to the upturned eyes - the outer corner higher than the pupil, sharper, as if she's glaring at you.

Metric 2 - the Size/Proportion

We use the eyes-to-face proportion

realistically, it’s about 1 to 10

the eyes are usually bigger in the anime-style

can get as small as 1 to 6 or 7

can get as large as 1 to 3 or 4

the bigger, the more childlike

the smaller, more realistic, more mature

Possible Combinations

examples from left to right are

• largeupturned,

• smallupturned,

• largedownturned,

• smalldownturned

Metric 3 - the Position

the vertical position

This is related to size/proportion but we factor in the forehead as well.

The higher the eyes are positioned, the longer the face, and the more realistic, and mature it looks.

Realistically, in general, the forehead is one-third of the entire front plane, and the eyes are right under it.

The lower the eyes are positioned, the smaller the face, the bigger the cranium, once again, more baby-like.

Eyes in anime are placed slightly lower, depending on the art style, sometimes, they can be very realistically placed and sized.

The Horizontal Position

Realistically, the eyes can be closer together or wider

In anime there’s usually a one-eye-wide gap, but it can be wider if the face is wider.

When I was talking about size, saying bigger and smaller is not accurate, because you can’t simply enlarge or shrink them since the distance is fixed. What really dictates the size is the height - vertically shorter or longer.

and this is also why by changing the sizes you change the shapes and the way you draw.

Part 3 - the Facial Expressions

The emotions of the character affect the eyes in many ways.

There are 4 major variables - 1)the shape of the eyes 2)the size of the eyes 3) the size of the iris and pupil 4) the brow movement

Examples from left to right are:

Happy - a bit vertically shorter as they squint, normal iris size, and normal brow arch.

Angry - a bit vertically longer as they’re wide opened, normal iris size, eyebrows pointing at the centre.

Shock - wide opened, smaller iris and pupil size, eyebrows pointing outward.

Fear - similar to happy eyes but the eyebrows are similar to the shocked face.

Part 4 - How to Draw the Anime Eyes from Different Angles

There’s no way I can include every single combination, quickly go through the key points of drawing from some of the most popular angles.

 

In fact, it’s far more complicated than what you’re about to see since we also need to consider the position of the viewer and the movement of the head, but because the way you draw the eyes is fairly similar, and it’s more about how to draw the face, I chose not to include it

The Front View/0°

This is the simplest position, so I’ll use it to demonstrate how to draw the eyes in general

first thing first, we need to locate the eyes.

A vertical centre line that goes through the nose.

A horizontal line indicates the eye level.

we can use the proportion we learnt early to get a rough idea.

Don’t worry about accuracy, I never get it right on the first try.

And then locate the eyes, remember to check the one-eye-wide gap.

And put the pupils inside.

Since we’re drawing directly from the front, the 2 sides are mirrored, so we might as well use the symmetry tool for this one.

We’re using the downturned eyes. Break the upper eyelashes into 3 parts, and the outer corners are lower than the pupils, and we complete the shape.

15°

When it comes to drawing the eyes from any angle larger than 0, considering the side of the face is key.

Because we’re looking at it slightly from the side, the centre line is no longer separating the left and right faces into a 1 to 1 ratio.

 

 

The far eye subsequently becomes more narrow, it’s squished. Once again, pay attention to the 3-section eyelashes for the shape.

30°

The nose is under the closer edge of the far eye.

I’ll be honest with you, I don’t have a rule for how squished it is, as in what’s the exact angles

If you pay attention to the eyelashes, at least you’ll be more mentally organized

45°

Very squished, the nose passes the edge.Really tricky because of perspective.

I try to a rectangular guiding box to give me an idea of how the lines converge

rendering the far eye horizontally and vertically shorter, making it actually smaller.

Also, notice how the nose ridge blocks part of the view of the far eye.

I attempted to draw the eyelids instead of the eyelashes.

Imagine this fold on this piece of cloth here as the upper eyelid

As it turns around, we can only see the right side of it, the left side is blocked

however, we can see the front plane and bottom plane on the left side

Once we have the correct understanding of the eyelid, we can put in the eyelashes,

spanning outwards and away from the eyes

Apologies for any confusion, but this is honestly the best way I can think of to explain how to draw the far eye from an awkward angle

The Profile View/90°

The idea is quite similar, from the profile view, we can’t see the other side of the eyelid at all

Realistically, it’s like this.

Anime eyes are oddly wide, so from the side, it’s longer.

Pay attention to the positioning of the eye as well. I like to put it in the middle between the nose and the ear and vertically in the centre as well.

Part 5 - How to Colour the Anime Eyes

The shadow area in the anime style is quite prominent

we design the shape of the shadow. Notice how it caves into the pupil, this is a common pattern used in anime.

The dark ring is the collarette that we talked about earlier

The pupillary zone is a bit darker than the ciliary zone.

Put the highlights on it, to suggest the glossy and wet surface of the eyeball

Then we move on to the light area below the pupil.

I don’t believe there’s any logical reason for this decision, the closest thing that it resembles is the Wolffin nodules that I showed you earlier. Practically, I think it’s just a way to show the sparkling of the eyes like a gem.

The way the light area is cut also reminds me of the crypts of Fuchs.

Pale blue-green reflected light

2 reasons:

1) the hair is blue so physically, the light bounces off the eye, hence reflected light

2) red and green are complimentary, meaning that they are very different in hue, creating significant contrast. it really pops. They complement each other as long as they don’t compete in saturation.

 

For a similar reason, I use black edges for the white highlights, pushing them to the front.

 

We have the dark limbal ring that we mentioned earlier, and I created a bit of a strip pattern for it so that it’s not just a blurred-out line, which is boring.

I use glow layers for the light and multiply layers for the shadow, I amped up the light and shadow contrast, creating a transition where on the side, things are darker, but generally brighter in the middle.

 

And a couple of highly saturated spots for decoration.

There are 2 layers, the brown layer behind and the black layer in front.

The brown is here for the shape and the black is for the individual hairs,

I put some purple light in the central area for aesthetic reasons.

White lashes on the right side where the primary light is coming from, suggesting that they reflect so much light that they turn white.

Don’t forget the shadow for the sclera, how it matches the shadow on the iris, and blur it so that it looks smoother

 

Back to the iris, I decided to put a darker, more saturated orange under the light, to further bring out the light, and notice the pattern I used for the yellow light, it resembles a radiating stream pattern of the iris, which is also quite common in real life

 

A bit red light on the corneal limbus where the cornea and sclera meet

 

Notice the overall colours I used are analogous, red, orange and yellow, I like that because it feels harmonious with a bit of out-of-place colour for the contrast, and it’s more interesting.

 

Finally, I also added some orange colour on the top and bottom part of the sclera to suggest the blood vessels, and the caruncle because why not?