How to Paint Eyes That Bring Your Portraits To Life
How to Paint Eyes That Bring Your Portraits To Life
Learning how to paint eyes can be frustrating if you have not learned a few basic techniques in painting. Colors of the iris and pupil are important aspects of correctly mimicking the human eye. Read this article and at the end I will tell you how to get a free lesson in painting the human eye.
After you have the overall shape of the eye, you will want to get colors of the iris and pupil correct.
The iris of the human eye
The iris portion of the eye is a beautiful arrangement of style and color. In general, I think of the colors as spokes of a wheel propelling outward from the pupil. Paint the colors you see in this manner. For example, if the iris is "brown" with variations of light and dark, paint a basic brown round iris first. Then add the varying colors like spokes on a wheel. You may even see touches of yellow or green depending on what is being reflected in the eyes.
When finished, you will add the pupil the center, therefore you are not concerned with how the center of the "wheel" looks. It is very easy to add too much detail or try too hard for perfection when painting the iris. Just be aware of this and know when to stop. Some iris's don't resemble spokes at all but are circular or round in nature. Either way you will just need to add color where you see it.
The pupil of the human eye
Pupils are typically very dark and solid in color. I use a color close to black for the pupil. Add some black to the iris color for the pupils. Another thing that you have to do is make the pupil very round. You will paint in the pupil on top of the previously painted iris.
This article first appeared on Ezinearticles as How to Paint Eyes That Bring Your Portraits To Life