How to draw a realistic human eye
with just one pencil and eraser.
When drawing or painting a face of any form, if you don’t get the eyes right, you may as well put down your tools. I cannot stress how important it is, ALL ABOUT THE EYES! They can be daunting to get right but you must, before you continue the face.
We are discussing sketching the human eye in this article and I’m not about to ‘out’ anyone and show examples of where the eyes have been drawn incorrectly, and I think it would be quite hard to find because if they are wrong, they will look wrong and hopefully the artist corrects their mistake.
Is there a right way to draw the human eye?
The answer is a big fat NO! When you search the internet or YouTube you will find everyone teaching several different ways to get to the same outcome. There is no right way to begin the drawing and what is important is that the outcome is what you were wanting to achieve. If you want the eye to look incredibly realistic will differ to if you want it to look cartoon like, anime like or even Picasso like!
In the following YouTube video, I show you how I teach drawing a basic human eye. There is no reference photo used until you start shading the parts of the drawing in to give it the 3D appearance. My Daily Drawing Prompts are downloadable PDF’s that you can purchase. I cover a range of drawing skills in these prompts but most importantly, is that they are all achievable with art supplies that you have at home or within the classroom. That is why this drawing has been done with nothing else than a 2B pencil and a kneadable eraser.
Practice makes perfect, right?
When it comes to anything, practice makes perfect, and this is so crucial when it comes to drawing. Learning how to shade correctly, understand textures, shapes, tones, highlights, shadows, and even different weights of pencils. When starting out it is best to keep in the B range of graphite pencils but if I had to choose one pencil it would be a 2B because you can create dark areas plus draw very softly to achieve some very light soft tones as well. Once you can draw a page full of eyes and you see all these eyes looking back at you, you know you are ready to move on. I will include drawing both eyes in one of the future Daily Drawing Prompts.
Step-by-Step illustrations to guide you through drawing a basic human eye.
Complete guidance throughout the downloadable PDF.
What pencil and paper should I use?
Brand of pencil is totally up to the person using it. There have been pencils that I have been gifted by people that just has their business logo on it so it's a real no name brand of pencil and some of them can be beautiful to draw with and then I also have my favourites, being the Faber-Castell Goldfaber range and the Staedtler Mars Lumograph range.
As for paper, always go cartridge paper. It is generally fairly accessible and most 'visual diaries' and 'sketchbooks' will be cartridge paper but always check. The reason you want it to be cartridge is that it is acid free. What does acid free mean? Acid-free papers use alkaline paper making technology and contain an alkaline reserve, such as calcium carbonate, to neutralize acid compounds absorbed from the atmosphere or formed through natural aging. The paper will not age and go a stained colour.
Enjoy this YouTube video and above is the link for the Realistic Drawing of Human Eye Daily Drawing Prompt. They range from 10-minute drawing skills up to over an hour. This particular one of drawing the basic human eye should take you 30 minutes to do properly. Have fun and share your eyes with me on socials !
Mrs Red
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