Why Eyes Make or Break a Portrait

Ask any portrait artist what draws the viewer in first and the answer is almost always the eyes. They carry expression, mood and the sense of a living, breathing person. Get them right and even a loosely worked portrait feels believable. Get them wrong and the whole drawing can feel unsettling, no matter how well you have handled the nose or the hair.

The good news is that expressive eyes are not the result of some mysterious talent. They come from careful observation and a handful of reliable pencil techniques. This article walks through the approach I use in my own sketchbooks, from the first block-in to the final catchlight.

Start With the Structure, Not the Lashes

The most common mistake I see in student work is jumping straight to the eyelashes. They are the most eye-catching feature, so they feel important. But lashes sit on top of a form, and if that form is not solid, the lashes will float and look pasted on.

Begin instead with the shape of the eye socket and the eyeball itself. Remember that the eyeball is a sphere, roughly the size of a golf ball, set into the skull. The eyelids wrap around that sphere, which means the upper lid follows a curve that is steeper in the middle and flatter at the corners.

• Lightly mark the inner and outer corners first, checking their angle against each other.
• Draw the upper lid as a single flowing line, then the lower lid as a shallower curve.
• Indicate the iris as a circle, but check how much of it is hidden by the upper lid. Most people show only the top two-thirds.
• Keep these early lines faint. Use a 2H or HB pencil and barely touch the paper.

Step back often. Squinting at your drawing helps you see whether the eyes sit at the correct angle in the head. In a three-quarter view, the far eye compresses and the near eye widens, and forgetting this is one of the quickest ways to flatten a portrait.

Build Shadow Before Detail

Once the shapes are convincing, begin to model with tone. The eye is a series of subtle shadows, and it is these shadows, not hard outlines, that give it depth.

Start with the deepest darks. These are usually found in the pupil, the shadow cast by the upper lid across the eyeball, and the crease of the eyelid itself. Using a 2B or 4B pencil, block these in with light pressure, building gradually rather than pressing hard straight away.

Then move to the mid-tones. The white of the eye, known as the sclera, is never actually white. It catches the shadow of the upper lid and darkens towards the corners. A common error is leaving it as blank paper, which makes the eye look like a cartoon.

• Shade the sclera with a light grey, darker near the upper lid and at the inner corner.
• In the iris, note that the top is usually darker because of the lid's shadow.
• Use the direction of your pencil strokes to follow the curve of the eyeball, not the flat page.

Blend sparingly. A light touch with a paper stump or a soft brush can smooth transitions, but over-blending kills the sparkle. Sometimes a few visible strokes are exactly what the drawing needs.

Catchlights and the Living Glint

The catchlight is the small bright reflection of a light source on the glossy surface of the eye. It is tiny, often no bigger than a pinhead, but it does more to make a portrait feel alive than almost any other mark.

Place the catchlight deliberately. In most lighting setups, from a window or a lamp, it appears in the upper part of the iris, slightly off-centre. Both eyes should have one, and they should sit in the same relative position on each iris.

The simplest technique is to leave the paper white. Plan for it before you shade, then work around that small patch. If you have already filled it in, you can lift graphite with a kneaded eraser shaped to a point, then reinforce it with a touch of white pastel or a very sharp eraser edge. Resist the urge to make it huge. A modest catchlight reads as a glint, while a large one turns the eye glassy and vacant.

The Eyelids, Lashes and Lower Lid

The upper eyelid is not a line but a soft edge where the skin turns under. Drawing it as a hard outline makes the eye look pasted on. Instead, indicate the thickness of the lid with a narrow band of shadow, and let the lash line emerge from that shadow rather than sitting on top of it.

Lashes grow in clumps, not as single hairs spaced evenly like a comb. Look for gaps and clusters. Draw them with quick, tapered strokes, thicker at the root and finer at the tip. Use a sharp 2B or 3B pencil and vary the pressure.

The lower lid is subtler still. Its lashes are shorter, sparser and often lighter in tone. A faint line of shadow just beneath the lower lid suggests the roundness of the eyeball and adds age or character, depending on how pronounced you make it.

Practice With Intention

Expressive eyes come from repetition. Fill a page of your sketchbook with eyes drawn from life, from photographs and from your own reflection. Vary the age, the mood and the lighting. Draw a tired eye, a laughing eye, a suspicious eye. Each one will teach you something about how shadow falls and how the shape changes with expression.

Work slowly at first. Speed comes later, once the shapes and values are second nature. And remember that a portrait is not a photograph. A slightly softened edge or an imperfect line often carries more feeling than a technically flawless copy. Let the pencil do the seeing, and the eyes will do the talking.