How to draw sparkly eyes

Intro

Hey! I’m mintleaf and I love drawing. Today I’ll show you some simple steps for creating sparkly eyes. This is my first post, so feel free to let me know how I can improve! I’m trying to keep it as beginner friendly as possible, but some bits might get a bit complicated so if you’re confused, just ask! I use Clip Studio Paint, but this tutorial should work on most drawing softwares. My style is somewhat messy, but you can adjust it to make it look cleaner and suit your style!

Brushes

None of the brushes I use are mine. Some of them are default, but some are downloaded(for free!).

Sketch:

Colour:

Airbrush:

Eraser:

Fundamentals for drawing an eye

When drawing an eye, it is important to take in what emotion you want to convey and what gender they are. Eyes and eyebrows are very important for placing emotion in your character.

There are also some simple terms I will use for the eyes. Just a reminder that anime generally doesn’t use the tear ducts, so I will not be including them in my final product.

Colours

Colour choice plays a huge role in drawing an eye, because the shades you pick instantly influence the mood. Warm tones can make the eye feel lively or intense, while cooler hues can create a calm, distant, or mysterious look. Matching the colour to the emotion you want to express helps the whole drawing feel more intentional and expressive.

Sketch

First, make a rough sketch of the eye you want to colour. I’m not going into detail about how to draw the eye itself, so you can use your own style. Your sketch doesn’t need to look exactly like mine — just close enough that you can follow the steps. Once you’re happy with the sketch, fill in the base colour of the eye like this.

Base Colours

Next, fill in the base colours. Choose a fairly saturated colour for the iris(aka the coloured bit of the eye), and use a dark brown for the eyelashes. Make sure to turn on Alpha Lock so you can colour without going outside the lines.

Magic wand settings

After, set your magic wand tools to these settings.

This makes the magic wand tool select only pixels of the same colour. This important for the next step.

Using the Magic Wand

Select the iris with the magic wand tool as shown below. Make sure you are on the flat colour layer and not the lineart layer.

Make a new layer and fill it in with the same colour of the iris(you can do this by using the eyedropper tool). Then press alpha lock to only colour in the area you selected.

Local Shading

The next step is to add darker shadows of the eye. On the same layer as the area where you used the magic wand, colour one half of the eye in a darker, saturated colour and create a barrier between the light and the dark with a really dark colour-this helps create depth. Use your original iris colour as a reference so everything stays consistent.. Also colour in the big highlight with the original eye colour.

More shading and adding highlights

Afterwards I can add more highlights. I changed the colour of the lighter half to be darker so I can see the highlights more clearly. Also add a darker, less saturated colour of the darker half to show shadows underneath the eyelash.

Normally I’d add some depth to the eyelashes and call it done, but since we’re going for sparkly eyes, there are a few extra steps to make them really shine.

Render result

I can now start rendering it! Here’s how it will look like after its rendered

Its a big jump, but I’ll give you the easy steps on how to render it.

I’ll start with the eyelash, as thats the hardest part.

Rendering the eyelash

Firstly, you’ll want to make a new layer and use the magic wand tool to select the dark brown colour. You can then press alpha lock or just keep the area selected. Select an even darker colour to put at the bottom of the eyelash.

You can set your brush to around 20% opacity, lightly glaze a soft blue over the lighter part of the iris, then use the eyedropper to pick up the new blended colour you’ve created and paint a few subtle highlights along the top of the eye to give it extra depth and shine. Why blue? Under the blue sky, shadows and highlights are generally blue. But you can adjust this colour to suit your lighting!

Now add a new layer. Name this layer eyelash highlights and put it above your sketch layer. Then add some of your iris colour to the middle of the eyelash and blend it into the brown. Also at the tips of the eyelash add a light purplish-gray.

After this, you should add a much lighter brown to the tips of the eyelash to give it a bit more depth. Then turn on Alpha Lock, airbrush a light pink to the base and add a mid brown where the dark and light brown intersect.

After that, touch up some areas by adding some extra highlights and additional shadows. Make sure to use my finished render as a reference as of where to put them!

Rendering the Sclera

Now lets render the sclera(aka the white bit of the eye). Make a new layer right underneath the lineart. Use a light purple grey on half of it and then make a kind of spiky pattern to mimic the shadows underneath the eyelash. Also add a slightly darker barrier between the white and shadow.

Rendering the Iris

Now its time to render the iris! Make a new layer above all of your layers. First add a big diamond in the middle of the pupil(the black bit of the eye) for added sparkliness. Then add a subtle highlight in the darker half of the eye. Next add a lighter colour of the iris as a side highlight.

 

 

Adding Sparkle!

Now, lets add some extra sparkle! Here’s how the final product will look:

Lets first add a complementary colour to our base highlight on the base colour. Use the same layer as your base colour.

Complementary colours

Whats a complimentary colour? A complimentary colour is essentially the colours opposite the colour wheel. In my case, I use blue as a iris colour, so the complimentary colour of blue is orange(but I changed it to yellow as it looks nicer).

Complimentary colours can affect the mood of your eye!

Adding sparkle to the iris

Now, select the soft airbrush and set the brush mode to add(glow). This is what’s really gonna make those eyes sparkle! First, choose the complementary colour and airbrush it at the base. Then go onto you iris render layer, select the iris colour and airbrush some little dots around it.

Adding sparkle to the eyelash

With the airbrush still on the iris colour, go onto your eyelash highlight layer and airbrush it on the area where you blended some blue into the eyelash. Also add a purplish colour(still with an airbrush) at the tips of the eyelash.

Skin

And the final step, adding the skin! Make a new layer underneath all your layers and add a skin tone of your desire.Then airbrush some light pink for blush, and add a darker tone of the skin colour under the eyelid.

Layers

This is how the layers turned out. Yours might look a little different to mine, thats ok!

Conclusion

I hope you learnt how to draw a sparkly eye and some other stuff as well! Even if you didn’t learn anything, just looking at this post is supporting me! Thank you so much and I hope you have a great day!