How To Draw a Realistic Eye - Step by Step Eye Tutorial - You Can Draw This!

Hi guys! I'm Nina and in this tutorial we'll be drawing a realistic eye using graphite pencils. My previous video on how to draw a realistic eye just hit 1 million views which is just amazing and now when I'm a lot more experienced youtuber it's time to create a new one. As always I will keep it simple and informative. So let's start! So this is my set of pencils but I'm not going to use all of them. I'll take 2H and 2B. I love using black pencils in my drawings because graphite pencils are gray even the softest ones. You can replace black pencils by soft graphite pencils from 5B to 12B for example. I'm also going to use this brush for blending. This is a flat synthetic makeup brush. Why makeup? Because makeup brushes are tightly packed and perfect for blending. At least I think so. A soft tissue, a q-tip or a piece of cloth will also do. I'm also going to use an eraser. An edible one is very comfy because you can shape it the way you want and I have one more. It's shaped as a pencil and called perfection 7056 by Faber-Castell. This eraser is also cool because it allows you to erase really really thin lines. I want to underline that it's totally fine if you use only one pencil and a normal eraser. You will still be able to draw a realistic eye. When drawing eyes you should start with drawing a circle. I just know that some of you will have problems with drawing a circle so I also made a tutorial on how to draw a perfect circle without tracing and compasses. Check it out, the link will also be in the description. So, draw a circle. This circle is the eyeball. I always start drawing using a hard pencil, in my case it's 2H and when I get into shading later I will use softer pencils to create depth and realism. Be sure not to press too hard on your pencil, have patience and you will be rewarded. Right in the middle of the eyeball I'm drawing an iris. It's twice as small. And then goes a pupil. The size of the pupil changes depending on the light. It's big in the dark and small in the light. I'm drawing the size I prefer. After this I'm going to form the shape of the eye and draw the eyelids. So, obviously the length of our eye depends on the length of the first circle which is the eyeball as we already know. So, the inner corner is a little lower than the outer corner. To draw the lids we need to connect both corners. Notice that the lid covers the top of the iris. The bottom lid is more shallow than the upper lid. The last steps in shaping the outlines of my sketch is to draw the upper and lower lash lines and an upper crease. It's okay if the crease doesn't follow the lid form. The lower lash line disappears into the tear duct. I'm not going to draw the eyelashes now because it's a lot better to draw lashes after the shading part is completed as the very last step. I'm also going to draw a reflection like this. By looking at the reflection we can say where the light source is. Reflections can be drawn in a lot of different shapes. It depends on the light source. You can even give it the shape of a heart. Why not? So, this is how my sketch looks so far. It's very important to have patience when drawing anything as it will not turn out well when you force the sketch. But that also applies to the next steps where we're going to texture and shape the eye to make it look realistic. So, remember to like this video and comment and even share with your friends if you like it of course and follow the tutorial. I'm starting to fill in the pupil first using a black pencil and then the iris. The iris is such a beautiful and unique thing. No wonder they say the eye is the window to the soul. It's such a personal and unique thing, you know? If you do a good iris you have almost already done a cool realistic eye. I'm using a 2H pencil. There are so many details inside and it can be really challenging to draw all of them. I'm filling the entire iris first and blending the pencil with a brush to get a very smooth and even surface. I'm giving more darkness to the ring of the iris. Even if the eye has a very dark natural color, the iris ring is darker anyways. I'm using a 2B pencil here. Even though we haven't drawn the lashes yet, we have to think about them because they cast a shadow right under the upper lid. It means that the area right under the upper lid is going to be a little darker. That includes the iris too. And now the most challenging and exciting thing is to give the iris some structure. I love this part so let's finally do it. I'm adding some lines coming out of the pupil and they can be both straight and curved. As I said, the texture of the iris is very special but I would call it a little torn, you know? So think of creating this torn texture with holes, layers, different colors and so on. It's exactly the kind details I want to add to the iris. By the way, I'm using a 2B and a black pencil here. I'm taking the eraser and pulling out the pencil to give my iris light and beautiful lines. And now guys, I want to show you my YouTube channel. As you see, I really have a lot of helpful videos. So if you want to see more tutorials, go to playlists. And I actually have like its own playlist. It's called tutorials. So you can learn really a lot such as how to draw realistic facial features and actually the entire face too. So really check it out. I think you will like it. So now when the hardest part of the drawing is done, let's finish the inner part of the eye which is a tear duct and the white of the eye. Remember what I said about the eyelashes and the area right under the upper lid? It's darker because the lashes block the light. So I'm just taking my brush because it has some graphite leftovers and shading the entire area but making it darker on top and in the outer corner. I'm also using a 2H pencil here and I blend it too. I'm filling in the tear duct using a 2H pencil and blending it and blending it. And I'm pulling out the highlights in the middle of it. And that's basically it for now. Using a 2H pencil, I'm filling in the upper lid and blending it afterwards. When blending, you have to follow the direction of your strokes. And I'm adding darker shadows along the crease using a 2B pencil. Notice that the shadows don't have any hard edges. On the contrary, they're pretty smooth. You can achieve this result by taking your time and making steady strokes that are really close to each other. I'm doing the same with the lower lid except the area right under the lash line is also darker. This will make the eye look more three-dimensional and therefore realistic. Some people also have a crease under the bottom lid but this crease isn't as obvious as the crease above the upper lid. It depends on how the lid wraps around the eye. I'm blending the pencil as much as needed because I want the skin to look as smooth and realistic as possible. But there is a fine line between making it too smooth and just smooth enough because skin has some kind of texture and some pencil strokes can imitate it too. It's time to draw the lashes now to finish this eye. Some people do really well until they get to this part. But don't worry. First of all, I have a really cool, simple and detailed tutorial on how to draw perfect lashes. Tap on your top right corner or find the link in the description to watch it. For now, I will just explain how to do lashes briefly. This is what you need to know. Eyelashes are not straight at all. They're curved. Since the eyelid wraps around a curved object, the eyeball, you need to draw the lashes at different angles like this. Be sure to keep your pencil sharp. Some of the lashes also overlap each other. Observe what I'm doing here and try to practice on a line outside the eye if you feel insecure about drawing lashes straight away. Also, it's important that you don't draw the lashes too short. I noticed that some artists make them really short and it really doesn't look as good as it could have been. I think you should go and take a look in the mirror to see how long your lashes actually are or maybe find a person nearby and get really up to their face to observe the lash length. And the last important thing about the eyelashes is that they don't grow in a straight row. They actually grow in several rows like shark's teeth, for example. It's like three or sometimes even four rows. Our lashes are really pointy, so I'm using a sharp black pencil. Basically, the darkest pencil I have. And in the end, you can add some unique lashes that grow in a messy way. We're almost there. The last step is to take a little break and come back to your drawing with a fresh head. By doing this, you will be able to see the flaws you couldn't see before. For example, I think the lash line needs more highlights. You can also do it by using a white gel pen, for example. It can make a huge difference, giving the drawing that realistic wetness. Right now, I don't have a white gel pen, but if I did, I would use it definitely. So this is the end of my tutorial. Thank you so much for watching till the end. I really hope you enjoyed watching it and if so, leave a like or a comment and share it with your friends to support my channel. Thanks again and see you in the next tutorial, guys. Bye!