This is when knowledge about how real eyes work comes in handy. Still, sometimes you don't want to do this. You can often get around this by turning the whole head to look in the desired direction. However, one of the trickiest things to do with them is make them seem like they're looking in specific directions. I would even include lines for eyes, either vertical or horizontally drawn:ĭot eyes can easily be expressive by simply adding lines connected to them, around them or eyebrows above them: I suppose the simplicity is what appeals to me most.īy 'dot eyes,' I don't only literally mean eyes that are dots but also longer elliptical shaped eyes. Dot Eyeĭot eyes are not only the easiest type of eyes to draw, they also happen to be my favorite. Keeping these four things in mind, let's see how we can best use this info when drawing our cartoon eyes. It's another way to add depth and dimension to your cartoon eyes. They even cast a shadow on the eyes more often than not. Eyelids have thickness - Eyelids are not painted on the sphere of the eye, they have depth.

Unless you're Garfield the cat, you want eyelids to wrap around the eyeball to add dimension to your eyes. Eyelids wrap around the sphere - Another thing that can make or break the look of a cartoon eye is how the lids interact with the sphere of the eyes.In cartoon eyes, you can vary the angle these origins have to each other in order to add variety. I'll show you more about this later. The average eye's lid origins tend to line up. Yet in reality, they have specific origins from which they pivot to open and close. The eyelids have an origin - In many cartoon eyes, the lids tend to often appear out of no where.Eyes are spheres - This is, of course, the most common sense of all the things, yet when drawing eyes, most of us tend to draw flat stickers for eyes instead of spheres inserted in the head.Let's quickly take a look at why these things are good to know: Some of these things may seem like common sense, but more often than not, when drawing cartoon eyes, they're ignored. When drawing cartoon eyes, there are four things about realistic eyes to keep in mind: Especially the more naturalistic your cartoon characters are. However before we begin, just as having knowledge of drawing real heads helps your head drawing, having real knowledge of how real eyes work, will help your cartoon eye drawing. In this section I'm going to be talking about a few specific types eyes and what they're made up of. Eyes come in all types of shape and sizes.

Eye sketch base