Archive for December, 2008

how to draw eyes

If you have been practicing my portrait tutorials for drawing perfectly proportioned human heads, you are now ready to delve into the details with drawing features. I’ll start with the eyes, which can be very expressive! The eyes are one of the most important features to get right in a portrait, often times you can identify someone by only looking at their eyes. Just try a celebrity identification game, where they only show you eyes.

It will be helpful to have a photograph to look at for this exercise, because everyone’s eyes are so different. I’ll show you how to draw a basic eye, these skills can be applied to any type of eye. We have to start by thinking of the eyeball, everyone has them! It is a large three dimensional object sitting inside the skull that the eyelids lay upon. If you keep the form of it in mind, it will help stop you from drawing flat, unrealistic eyes.

The inner most line for the eyelids is drawn surrounding the eyeball. Notice how the size of the eyeball dictates where the eyelids end. The tear duct falls to the side of the eyeball but inside of the eyelids.

Eyelids have a thickness to them that we cannot ignore, and usually when looking at someone you can see the thickness to their bottom eyelid. The upper eyelid also has a thickness, which when we cannot see, we know is there because of the shadow it casts onto the eyeball.

The eyelid also usually folds and creates creases and wrinkles, we need to add these as well because they give even more character to the eyes. Be careful no to draw these in too harshly, examine your subject closely and draw lines in the skin delicately. Remember that we are made up of shadows and light instead of harsh lines.

Eyelashes are very delicate hairs, so we also refrain from drawing harsh stiff lines for them. Use some soft lines, some shadows, and examine your subject to see where you can see the most eyelashes. Usually when you are looking at someone straight on, you will mostly be able to see the eyelashes at the outer edges of the eyelids. Also make sure to not draw eyelashes into the inner thickness of the bottom eyelid.

The colored part of the eye is called the iris, and the black part is the pupil. Look at your subject closely and notice where the lights and shadows fall on the iris and pupil, the texture of the iris is usually not very harsh. Correctly placed highlights and shadows will give you depth and form, keeping it from looking flat.

We can’t forget the tear duct, this is also not a flat object and will have shadows and highlights because it is behind the eyelids.

The “white” of the eyes is never perfectly white, because it is actually a round object. Remembering the initial eyeball, add shadows to the edges of where the eyelids envelope the eyeball. Look at your subject’s eyes and capture the light that is hitting the eyes, as well.

Observation is the most important part of drawing. Spend more time looking at your subject then looking down at your paper and pencil. Capture the details and you will capture the likeness of the person you are drawing. Keep practicing and enjoy!

christina ricci eyes

Did a quicky illustration of Christina Ricci today. I love her big googly eyes.

how to draw noses

If you have been practicing my portrait tutorials for drawing perfectly proportioned human heads, you are now ready to delve into the details with drawing features. We started with the eyes, and now we will move down to the nose.

It will be helpful to have a photograph to look at for this exercise, because everyone’s nose is so different and light can hit it in a billion different ways, making it difficult to give you a standard approach. Noses are handled very differently from drawing eyes, and we will mostly focus on how light is hitting them. Since there aren’t many hard lines on a nose, I’m going to show you how to develop a nose using values. Let’s start by drawing the entire basic shape of the nose. I’m going to do two different noses.

Pay attention to the nose you are observing, and draw out the different planes of the shape, you must think of this as a three dimensional object in space, not as flat lines on a piece of paper. The tip of the nose is usually a modified ball shape.

Notice how light is hitting the nose, simplify the values, and shade in the planes you drew.

Get a few more details in, by realizing the true shape of the nose from the basic planes earlier, and add a few more values.

Highlights are important! Observe the brightest area of the nose, and rough those in.

The last step is to keep adding variation in values, until you have developed the shape.

Noses require a lot of practice and patience. A lot of people assume that they know the shape of noses, and do not observe real noses enough. This can lead to flat, or piggish, unrealistic nose drawings. Avoid this by spending more time looking at your subject versus looking down at your paper drawing. For example, notice how delicately nostrils are formed, they are not holes punched into the nose, the nostrils usually curve inward toward the septum. All of these little details that you pick up during observation will in turn make your artwork come to life.

finished fawn

Yay, this little guy is done. I added a lot more details to his fur, and I really like how it turned out.

Aqua mailbox and other home improvements

Last weekend, David and I worked a little bit more on the house. It was really nice, and I wanted to post some photos, but David beat me to it and posted them on his blog. I’ll Show you guys too, with some before and afters.

Cuttings of rosemary and salvia greggii I’m trying to root. And, I didn’t really “steal” them, pfft, don’t listen to David.

Cutie pie, Mojito.

I spray painted our mailbox and outdoor lights the same aqua that I used on my vases indoors. Soon, we’re getting hardiplank installed and that ugly wood ripped out too, I can’t wait. Oh, in this shot you can also see the solar walkway lights I installed and my new red car. I also have several plants planted in the walkway to the front door, but I’ll take photos of that maybe in the spring when they get bigger and bloom.

Another shot of the mailbox. In spring, I will be planting Four O’clocks and other lovely plants around the mailbox and front yard too. Exciting!

Here was the mailbox and lights before we purchased the house.

That same weekend, we also got a lot of painting done in the guest room, and some more work in the master bedroom too, I’ll post photos when that is finished.

Fawn print for sale

I have added a new limited edition Giclee print of The Tall Fawn to my shop. The low price of $39.00 USD is still available!

Visit my illustration print shop to see all of the artwork for sale.