How to Draw Eyes
Today’s drawing tutorial will be devoted to how to draw eyes step by step. This is a very simple and accessible guide for beginners.
The lesson on how to draw eyes is one of the most important on my site, because drawing eyes is one of the most important skills in the process of creating a portrait of a person.


Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Step-by-step eyes drawing tutorial
- Deep study of eyes drawing
- Supplementary content
- Conclusion
Introduction
Why is eyes drawing such an important skill for any artist?
Eyes are one of the most expressive parts of a person’s face, and by being able to draw eyes correctly, an artist can convey not only a person’s emotions but also his character.
If you look deep into the history of art, what do you see?
From ancient times to the present day, sculptors, painters, photographers and filmmakers have placed a very strong emphasis on the eyes. For example, in the Georgian era, artists even painted eyes on ivory and wore them on bracelets or rings.
Knowing how to depict eyes and outher details of the face, a young artist will be able to create portraits of a wide variety of people.
So, where to start the process of learning how to draw eyes?
At first, young artists should learn to depict the eyes themselves. That is their outlines, eyelids, pupils, and eyelashes.
Then the artist should learn how to draw emotions. That is, to make the eyes kind, evil, sad, cheerful, etc.
Well, let’s get started!
Directions on How to Draw Eyes
Materials
- Pencil
- Paper
- Eraser
- Coloring supplies (optional)
Time needed: 30 minutes
How to Draw Eyes
- Draw a horizontal guideline.
Start with a horizontal line, which will help you draw the lower eyelids of the eyes in the next steps. This line should be light and easy to erase.
- Draw a second guideline a little higher.
In this step, draw another horizontal line that is located above the conditional middle of the paper sheet. Then draw a vertical line that will divide your drawing into two equal parts.
- Draw the upper eyelids.
Now start drawing the actual eyes. Draw two simple semicircles that should be adjacent to the top line from the last step.
- Draw the lower eyelids.
Using two more similar lines draw the lower eyelids. Note that the eyes should be at the same level, and the distance between them should be equal to the width of the eye.
- Draw the irises of the eyes.
The upper parts of the pupils should be slightly covered by the upper eyelids, and the lower edges should be slightly away from the lower eyelids.
- Draw the pupils.
Both pupils should be exactly in the central part of the irises. The top of the pupils should lightly touch the upper eyelids.
- Draw the eyebrows.
Slightly above the horizontal line from the first step, draw the eyebrows. Choose the shape of these brows based on your taste.
- Erase the guidelines
Delete all the construction lines drawn in the first and second steps. In addition, in this step you can find all the errors and inaccuracies to correct them.
- Color the eyes.
You can choose any color of the eyes that you have drawn. In our case, this is green color. Either way, be sure to leave the highlights inside unpainted.
Deep Study of Eyes Drawing
So, the eyes drawing lesson is over, what should you do next?
To take your skills to the next level, you need to practice a lot and perform the simple but very useful exercises described below.
- First of all, try repeating all the steps several times, but each time adding new elements, or changing those presented in my steps. For example, try changing the position of the pupils or adding longer eyelashes.
- You can also try to draw different emotions on the face by changing the shape of the eyebrows. Try to portray a more cheerful expression or a sadder one. This is exactly the process of conveying emotions through the correct drawing of eyes, which I spoke about above.
- Next, you can try to draw the entire face, depicting the eyes from this lesson and adding elements such as the nose, lips, ears, hair, etc.
After you have completed all these exercises, I advise you to try to draw a more voluminous and realistic drawing. To achieve this, you need to add the right shadows, highlights and midtones. I talk about what light and shadow are and how to apply it in the drawing process in my article about light and shadow.
Supplementary Content
To use this step-by-step drawing guide and all additional materials at any time, even if you don’t have internet, you can download a completely free PDF that I created just for you.
What will you find in this free PDF file?
- Eyes step-by-step drawing instruction
- Coloring page
- Tracing worksheet
- Grid drawing worksheet
You can print this lesson and any additional materials and use it at home or school to make learning easier.
Eyes Drawing: Adding Details
In this lesson, I will tell you and show you in detail how to draw eyes for beginners. The picture shows a woman’s eyes. You see that the eyes are wide open, have the correct shape, and there are lush eyelashes on the eyelids. It looks very nice!

Eyes Drawing Tutorial: Mastering Cartoon Style
Here, the eyes are presented in a cartoon style and are oval in shape. Many cartoon characters have this eye shape, and after you master this lesson, you can easily draw the whole character’s face.

Eyes Drawing Tutorial: Alternative Methods
Now let’s try a slightly more voluminous and realistic method. As you can see, the eyes in the example below look more like real human eyes.

Mastering More Realistic Style
You can easily draw realistic eyes, even if you are a novice artist and have little experience. The instruction is designed specifically for beginners and you can easily repeat all the elements.

Alternative Method
Now let’s learn an alternative method of drawing eyes. In previous instructions, you saw how I drew additional steps and auxiliary lines. Let’s now try to depict this part of the human face without preliminary steps, adding detail after detail.

Conclusion on How to Draw Eyes
So, this was quite a long but very, very useful tutorial and I hope you enjoyed it.
What could you learn by reading the article from beginning to end?
First, of course, you learned how to draw and paint eyes. This is the most important thing this article was supposed to teach you.
In addition, the instructions and additional materials taught you to be more confident when you pick up a pencil and begin to create images of a person’s face on paper.
But this is just the beginning in the process of learning how to create portraits. The next, extremely important step is to learn how to draw a portrait using the knowledge from this article. To continue the learning process, go to the article on drawing a face.
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