So how to draw anime (or manga) eyes? This is one of those tasks that appears easy from afar, but as you sit down to begin the actual drawing, especially if you are a beginner, it becomes apparent that there is more to drawing the anime eye than meets the eye (pun intended).
I set out to break down the drawing of anime eyes and to come up with a strategy that I will share with you in this tutorial.
Keep in mind that manga and anime have a strong range of art styles, from very cartoon-like to quite realistic artwork. The lessons and techniques you will learn in this article can be applied to any variety of stylization of the human eye.
Anime Eye Drawing & Design (printable Pdf)
I decided to redraw many anime and manga eyes and have found a set of commonalities that if properly deployed into your art will make any eyes you draw look anime!
A quick note, before going further, I will use the term anime to mean both anime and manga for simplicity. Although anime usually refers to animated, and manga usually refers to drawn (printed) art, the general style and approach to drawing is the same.
You can also click here to skip to the step-by-step at the bottom of the guide. So go ahead and click that link, no, I won’t be upset if you do skip to the end. However, in this tutorial, content that appears before the step-by-step is more important to take away than anything else.
How Not To Draw Manga Eyes ❖ By Futopia
Note that in my experience, Anime drawing takes just as much skill and practice as any other drawing. If anything, the simplification and stylization of the subject matter makes drawing decisions more complex. If you need help improving your overall drawings skills step-by-step, head over to theAcademywhere I teach theLearn to Draw in18 Steps course.
1 . Basic Eye Anatomy to Draw Anime Eyes Below is an image that will serve as a quick cheat-sheet for eye anatomy. We are drawing anime eyes, not conducting eye surgery, so don’t worry about the optic nerve or musculus ciliaris or other obscure ( 🙂 ) parts of the human eye. Below is everything we need to know for this tutorial.
Before discussing how to draw anime eyes, we need to understand the very basic anatomy terms when dealing with the human eye.
How To Draw Anime
You only need to know eight (8) anatomy terms of the eye, most, if not all, of which you probably already know. This knowledge in this case is required mainly for purposes of placement and understanding the rest of the article.
– we all know what these are: the fine hairs that grow out of the eyelids to protect the eyes from small particles and debris.
– the iris is a ring shaped membrane, with an adjustable circular opening (pupil) in the center. The iris iswhat people talk about when they talk about eye color. (Some people confuse it with the pupil, so here is a tip to remember it better: eye color= iris color)
How To Draw Eyes: Easy Drawing Projects
– The dark “spot” at the center of the pupil. The pupil is actually a hole at the center of the iris. The pupil appears black due to the absorption of light rays as they pass through the pupil and strike the retina.
– The upper eyelid crease is a horizontal indent formed above the upper eyelid that appears in some people. Notably, it is prominently indicated in most anime eye drawings, and stylized into a curved line. It helps situate the anime eye drawing so it is a good idea to take notice of it.
– The lacrimal caruncle is the small, pink, spot at the inner corner of the eye (the corner closest to the nose). It contains both oil and sweat glands. We will mostly use lacrimal caruncle as a landmark when visualizing the eye, as it is rarely drawn when drawing anime eyes.
How To Draw Anime Eyes. An Easy Comprehensive Tutorial
2 . Common Visual Elements of Anime Eyes Degrees of realism and stylization In anime and manga, eyes are drawn in various degrees of stylization. Human anatomy in anime is stylized often to the point of being unrealistic, yet still very recognizable as the anime counterpart of the real world person the artwork is describing. This is an important point. This means that if we are to draw anime, we must observe what we see in the world and put it through a stylizer machine before we output it on canvas as a more anime version of what we saw. Fortunately, we all have a stylizer machine called the brain!
In anime, there is a spectrum of on one end, very large anime looking eyes, and some on the other end, that are pretty realistic with some stylization flare. I tend to like something in the middle, although a lot depends on the artwork itself.
You can use this guide to draw eyes and stylize to your own comfort. Check out the image right below, anime eyes drawn on the left are more stylized and the ones toward the right are more realistic.
How To Sketch Anime Eyes, Step By Step, Drawing Guide, By Catlucker
In anime, as we move away from realism, the shape of the eye is larger and more round, and the iris itself is drawn larger as well. More realistic anime eye drawings closer follow real human anatomy, with eye shape less rounded, although still styled.
Note here that usually one highlight is dominant and is depicted larger, and the second subordinate and depicted smaller. Neither appear as a bounce light or reflective light, rather, each is a highlight representative of another light source nearby.
Adoption rate: in many examples in anime. There are also many examples where only one highlight appears, or where a light is cast from multiple sources and many highlights appear.
How To Draw Anime Male Eyes
If you are confused about terms describing how light interacts with a surface, or need a refresher on terms like bounce light or highlight, follow this link to an article I wrote on this topic, glossary of often-confusing art terms is at the bottom of that article).
The chart below indicates how in many examples, the smaller highlight is directly across the surface of the iris from the larger highlight, in some cases, it is placed across and down the surface of the iris.
A drop shadow from the upper eyelid covers the iris and the sclera one third or sometimes half of the way down. (Confused about what iris and sclera are? Scroll up to the anatomy section of this article, or click here to be taken there).
Female Anime Eye Drawing & Design (printable Pdf)
Adoption rate: in most example in anime. This element highlights what a lot of anime drawings are like: an effective simplification of complex real life forms to their most basic visual representation.
Since we usually have more volume in eyelashes on the upper eyelid than the lower, in anime drawings, the upper eyelid lines representing the eyelashes are drawn thicker, with more visual weight.
Adoption rate: in all examples in anime for females, in many examples of anime for males. The iris in enlarged comparative to the volume of the entire eye, taking up more space on the surface of the eye.
Anime Eyes Practice 1 By Drawdust On Deviantart
Omission of lacrimal caruncle, omission of detail, omission of individually drawn eyelashes. Adoption rate: omission of some anatomical details is present in all examples in anime.
No, you don’t have to draw a hundred of them like I did, just draw one, get a feel for it, then decide what you want to draw next!
To me that’s the great part of drawing, once a fresh canvas is in front of you, you get to decide what to do next! You feel like a ruler of your own domain – or at least you should feel that way, or rather, you will feel that way once your skill level is where you are happy with it.
How To Draw Manga Style Eyes
Okay, without further ado, let’s draw anime eyes. So far we have learned eight basic parts of the eye as discussed in detail above, these are:
We also discovered that anime eye drawings simplify real world anatomy in specific ways. I found seven ways actually, you may find more, but the basic seven simplifications in anime eyes are as follows.
Above is a time-lapse video of me drawing an anime eye. Let’s break it down, step-by-step. Below are steps you can take to draw a similar looking anime eye.
Paint Manga Eyes In 6 Steps
First thing, find good real life reference to look at. Then try to stylize the shape of the eye before you put it down on canvas.
Here define the shape of the anime eye drawing. Remember to simplify the shapes you see in real life for upper and lower eyelids.
The shape of the eye will change depending on perspective (its position in space relative to the viewer), so I am carefully observing the reference at this stage, then I simplify the shape in my mind and only then try to recreate what I imagined on the canvas.
Draw Manga Eyes │ Tombow
As you place the iris on the sclera, be mindful of the shape: what part of the iris is obscured by the lower and upper eyelids? Make sure to capture that position of the iris in your drawing. Note the enlarged iris in respect
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