Instruction Write

Necessary materials: Sheet of blank, white paper; pencil; eraser

Instructions:

1. You begin drawing the eye by drawing an almond shape on the paper. It can be any size of your choice, but it needs to be the shape of an almond laid on its side. This should be a light sketch, so be careful with how hard you press your pencil and how dark the lines are. The lines will become the inner eyelids later on; the line that defines the actual eye from the rest of the face. While drawing this, decide which eye you’re doing—the right or the left.

2. Next, draw a circle in the eye that will represent the iris, or the colored part of the eye. The circle should be towards the middle-top of the eye, but should not be a full circle, unless you are trying to express fear; or a person who’s had too much caffeine. We aren’t doing that. Instead, the iris should look like the sun’s reflection at the horizon of an ocean.

3. Now, draw a small circle inside of the iris. This is the pupil, so it’s OK to shade it in a bit. Now, it should look like an almond, with a half-circle in the middle-top, with a circle in the middle of the half-circle.

4. Add a small, triangular shape on top of the pupil; the triangle should be upside down, with the base touching the top eyelid, and tapering to a point at the pupil. This represents the reflected light in your eye.

5. Add some gentle shading in the iris area to show texture; if you look at your own iris, you will see patterns and colors, which are made up by the muscles in it. You can’t really go wrong here.

6. Beginning at the corner of the eyelid that is hypothetically closest to the invisible nose, lightly draw a line that curves parallel to the top eyelid. Leave a small amount of space between this line and the eyelid “almond”. When the line reaches half-way across the “almond”, continue, but add greater space between it and the line. By the time the line reaches the opposite corner of the “almond”, it should straighten out to a straight line. Don’t go any further than past the corner of the eyelid. This curving line represents the outer eyelid that folds over the inner.

7. Now, as a bit of shading around the corner of the eyelids closest to the invisible nose. You can extend the shading up a tiny bit if you want to try to envision the beginning of an eyebrow.

8. Add any more detail that you deem necessary (e.g.: eyelashes).