Drawing Manga Eyes (Part II)

Announcement (15/12/2015): 
JohnnyBro's How To Draw Manga has relocated to the following site:
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How to Draw Manga Eyes

The eyes are an important part of the face. It gives your characters personality, it conveys emotions and it basically changes the way your character looks. It is also the part where you can inject the most life into it compared to anywhere else.

Eye Parts

The above picture compares a realistically drawn human eye to a typical manga eye. Both types of eyes have the same parts to it, although the shapes are drawn differently. In manga eyes, the upper and lower eyelids does not always join together, and so the sclera (the white part of the eye) does not always have a clear outline. Also, even though both the irises pictured above are round, manga eyes can also be drawn oval in shape as you'd be able to see in the following sections.

Basic Eye Shapes

Here are some of the common basic shapes used to draw manga eyes.

Rectangular eyes are commonly used for male characters in shonen manga. You can play around with the rectangle by slanting it up or down, changing its length/width or varying how sharp the corners of the eyes are. 

Rounded eyes have a softer look, and so you'll find that many girl characters are drawn with these eyes. You can also draw rounded eyes for your younger male characters.

There are many ways that eyes can be drawn, for example the cat-like eyes drawn above. So the next time you're reading manga or watching an anime, start observing the many ways that eyes can be drawn.

Of course, this guidelines aren't definite, so feel free to experiment by drawing your characters with different eye shapes.

More after the jump.

Drawing Manga Eyes (Part I)

Announcement (15/12/2015): 
JohnnyBro's How To Draw Manga has relocated to the following site:
johnnydrawsmanga.com
Please visit us for more tutorials! Thank you

How to Draw Manga Eyes

How a Real Eye Works

In order to draw manga eyes, it is important that we first understand the structure of real eyes.

First we start with the eyeball. The eyeball is a 3D sphere inside the human head. There is an iris at the tip of the eye, and a pupil located at the center of it. The image below shows how the eyeballs look like from the side, front, and as it is rotated partially to the side.

In reality the eyeball isn't perfectly round, since the lens of the eyes is slightly raised from the eyeball. To test this out yourself, close your eyes and gently place a finger on your closed eyelids. Move your eyes around and you will be able to feel a slightly raised spot.

Notice the front area of the eye cut away with the dotted lines above? That's the flat area where the lens of the eyes go, creating the slight bump. The pupil of the eye is located on the flat spot.

More after the jump.