hello Lovelies!
I did it. I completed my first week of daily drawing. While one doesn’t seem like the greatest feat, I’ll tell you this: It’s not just my first full week of drawing for this year, but for any year. Even though it’s a small step, each one I take towards my goal becomes bigger and better in the long run. With that said, I am still very much learning. My first week may have been short in comparison, but it has shown me key things about myself, my art, and where we go from there. Since it’s the feature to draw attention, I start my art journey with Drawing Eyes.
Eyes Anatomy
As I’m sure you’ve seen, artists are absolutely insane when it comes to eye details. Realism and stylistic art alike, eyes are almost always a key point in characters. There is quite a bit of anatomy that works behind what we see as the eye. Why is this important?
Honestly, before learning about anatomy, I didn’t understand at all how the eye worked. Getting the right angles when drawing a face was always difficult for me. I had no understanding of how the eye worked and how to get it to look right in different perspectives. I always ended up doing a front view of the face. In order to combat that, I am doing the much needed research and practice on drawing an eye.
I know I have been drawing on and off my whole life, but I realize that none of that time was spent actually learning to draw. I might have naturally gotten better when looking at references and trying to make my own work, but without any formal training or even self-training, I’ve only been regurgitating my references.
Taking time, reflecting on the way the structures look, how movement and perspective works, and even the way the pencil feels while I draw, suddenly feels so different. It’s interesting experimenting with holding my pencil and the angle at which works best for me when I draw.
Learning how to Learn
I’m not just a rookie when it comes to drawing technique, I’m also a noob just trying to learn to draw. And those sound like the same thing, but in my first blog about Growing as an Artist, observation is a key factor in growth. I’m coming to terms with my lack of being able to even see structures or form in an artistic lens. I question myself now, if it’s just in art, or if I’ve been living my life oblivious to the complexities of the world. That might be an exaggeration, but it’s definitely something that I’m going to do my best to reflect on from here on. As I learn more about how to see art, I learn more about my relationship to art as well. And that brings me to my realization and potentially unpopular opinion.
I am Not a Fan of Drawing Realism
It takes great time, effort, and skill to draw realism. People make beautiful artworks when it comes to realism and hyperrealism that are absolutely mind blowing and stunning. I, however, am not interested in drawing that. Now I don’t know if this is me coping because it seems like I won’t be able to do it (I get it though I just started) but it doesn’t pique my interest. I don’t know if it’s just me, or something ingrained in all of us, but it feels like realism is the standard which is understandable.
Learning eyes from scratch, I watched The Drawing Database-Northern Kentucky University. He goes into extensive detail on the function of the anatomy around an eye, how it works in perspective, and where to shade. It’s a wonderful study. And I feel like I learned a lot from it. But the reality is, I am much more invested in drawing other things. I should say my artistic pursuit is probably in a different direction. I will probably continue to watch their videos because of the in-depth explanation and visuals of the eye and other anatomy on their page that I find insightful. Since I still lack this observation skill, I think taking my time retaining the information they go over will benefit me greatly. Even if I don’t draw realism as much the next go around, I think it’ll help when I break away and do other styles.
The Pain of Drawing Matching Eyes
Honestly, Does anyone else have this problem? I never thought I was a crazy good artist, but I thought I had decent skill, a good eye. I lost that confidence after drawing eyes this past week. Kind of joking, but definitely a reality check. When I followed along to a video or even made one from my imagination, one eye looked good. Drawing two eyes seemed impossible. Maybe all my original characters, (OCs), will have eye patches or really long bangs. That’s what I thought.Up until now, I don’t even understand how I drew people.
Learning Again from Scratch
I took a step back. The next time I drew, I would revisit the eye from scratch. What didn’t I understand? How can I make two matching eyes? So I did just that. There was a section in the eye anatomy video I glossed over because I didn’t connect with it. I will not be doing that again. I took another look at it, the part I had almost readily ignored, and it made a huge difference in my understanding of the eye in perspective. How could I make two good eyes if I couldn’t even grasp one eye from different angles?
I spent a lot of time just looking and observing; I picked out an art book that goes over the anatomy of each body part. Thinking and comparing it to Northern Kentucky’s eye anatomy, trying to grasp the way different parts of the eye look in different perspectives. The book, Drawing the Human Head by Burne Hogarth, the Author of Dynamic Anatomy, helps add to what I learned from the video. I put it to the test at the end of the week by looking at a ¾ reference picture. Honestly, at the beginning of the week, I probably would have made the eyes the same. Like a mirrored version of each other. I wanted to spend more time just observing the reference before I went to draw it.
Improvements to Make
It’s not the best, of course, but I am proud of how it looks. Especially thinking back on how I used to draw eyes. Some things I still would like to work on that I noted on the page:
Key notes
- Creating likeness (in angle) of the two eyes (like the belong to the same person)
- THE TEAR DUCT (My new mortal enemy)
- Creating depth of the eye (the eye looking like its inside the eyelid
- Maintaining roundness (I tend to lose the spherical quality as I add the eyelids)
These are a few notes of what I want to focus on and consider as I continue to draw eyes. Check out my weekly Sketchbook Check In on my YouTube. I’ll be flipping through the work I did during the week, and posting a drawing session or two as well.
Keeping it Going
At first, I planned to begin drawing the nose in Week 2, but reflecting on the week, I will probably do another week focusing more on placing the eyes on an actual face and stylization. I think I drew too many singular eyes. I’ve been drawing a pair of them too close together. As I stated above, while I think realism is great for practicing technique, it isn’t what I personally want to create. So in this next week, as I develop greater technique, I’ll start to create eyes in other styles that suit me better. While I am trying to get better at technique, I am still making new designs for my shop on Etsy. Go check out some cool, cute merch and stick around as I enter my 2nd Week of my art journey as I continue to draw eyes.