How to Draw Eyes: A Sphere Wrapped in Eyelids

Start with the ball

Lightly draw a circle for the eyeball. The visible iris is smaller than most people expect: the coloured part of an adult eye is about 11 to 12 mm across. Compare it with the opening of the eyelids and you will see it takes up a little under half the width.

Because the eye is a ball, the iris sits on a curved surface. When the eye looks to the side, the iris turns into an ellipse, narrower in the direction it is turning away. Drawing a perfect circle for an eye that is looking sideways is one of the most common reasons a portrait seems to stare past the viewer.

Wrap the lids around it

Draw the upper lid as a curve that wraps over the ball, highest slightly toward the inner side of the eye rather than in the middle. In a relaxed gaze it covers the top of the iris. If you show white above the iris, the person looks surprised or alarmed. The lower lid is flatter, with its lowest point toward the outer corner, and usually just touches or sits slightly below the iris.

Lids have thickness. The lower lid in particular has a small flat ledge along its edge that catches light, between the lashes and the eyeball. Drawing a thin light band there instead of a single line makes the eye look set into the face. The upper lid casts a shadow onto the top of the eyeball, so the white of the eye is darker at the top than at the bottom.

Corners, crease and lashes

At the inner corner there is a small pink mound, the caruncle, and the opening dips toward it. The outer corner is usually a little higher or lower than the inner one depending on the person; check your reference rather than assuming they are level, because that tilt is part of a likeness.

The crease above the upper lid follows the curve of the lid, set back from it. Its depth varies enormously between people and is often hidden. Lashes grow from the edge of the lid, curve outward and come in small clumps rather than evenly spaced lines. Upper lashes are longer and darker than lower ones. Draw a few clumps and a dark lash line, not a fence of separate hairs.

The iris, pupil and highlight

Give the iris a slightly darker outer ring, the limbal ring, and texture that radiates from the pupil like spokes. The top of the iris is darker because it sits in the shadow of the upper lid. The pupil is a clean dark circle, the darkest value in the face.

The highlight is a reflection of the light source on the wet, curved cornea. Both eyes reflect the same light, so the highlight must be in the same position in both: if it is at two o’clock in one eye, it is at two o’clock in the other. Leave it as bare paper rather than adding white at the end, and keep it partly overlapping the pupil edge, not floating in the middle of the iris.

Two eyes, one face

Draw both eyes together, not one finished eye followed by the other. Rough in both shapes, check the gap between them, which is about one eye width on average, and confirm they sit on the same tilted line. Then refine them in parallel so they match in size and value.

In a three-quarter view, the far eye is narrower and partly hidden by the bridge of the nose. Its iris becomes a tighter ellipse. Beginners tend to draw both eyes the same width, which flattens the face. Measure the visible width of each eye separately in your reference.

Questions before you start