Valentine Dance - Eyes Process

This is a detailed process post on just one aspect of my work on this piece: the coloring and shading the eyes!

1. Linework. I draw my linework using a variable-width pen in Manga Studio. I sketch in the position of the pupil and iris as a guide for later.

2. Eyelashes sketch. Getting the shape and angle of the lashes is tricky so I always sketch in the shape and general path of the eyelashes on a separate layer.

3. Eyelash linework. I draw the linework for the lashes on a separate layer from my regular linework. I also use a special pen with an extra-pointy tip to give the lashes a narrower, feathery feel. The trick to drawing them is to draw just a few really thick strokes and then pad them out with lots of very narrow individual strokes, making sure to include some variation in length and angle. If it's too regular and consistent, it looks fake. Imperfection looks more realistic.

4. In Photoshop, I lay in the basic color blocking using an off-white for the whites of the eyes, never true, pure white. If you use pure white, the shiny highlights won't be visible later. You almost never want to color anything in pure white because it leaves you no room for highlights. I paint the pupil in a very draw grey on its own layer with a mostly hard brush. On this character, the pupil is very small to show fear.

5. For the iris, I paint in a full ellipse of blue in each eye, including the part that is hidden inside the head. I put all the eye parts inside a folder with a mask.

6. To give the iris a faint, soft edge, I add an inner glow thick and a thin outer glow, both set to normal blend, using a color which is the same as the iris but darker.

7. On a layer above the iris, I use a lighter color, with the layer set to screen blend mode, and a hard, variable-width brush to paint in some bright streaks to add detail to the iris. I use just a few long streaks, bridged by narrow scribbles.

8. On another layer, I added some darker pie-shaped blocks to the iris, set to multiply.

9. Now the blue iris gets another layer effect, using inner bevel with color dodge and color burn, both turned down, but with a larger size. This adds a bright highlight to the bottom of the iris because an iris is actually a concave surface, unlike the main surface of the eye.

10. When painting the form shading of the character, the eye is the simplest part since it's just a sphere. But it should always have some shading to give it roundness.

11. In the cast shadows, always add a thin shadow to the surface of the eye to show where the eyelids and eyelashes will be casting a shadow on the surface of the eye. Since this character's head is tilted back, I also wanted a little extra shadow along the bottom edge of the eye, to enhance the dramatic underlighting effect.

12. Backlighting. A little backlighting gives the eyeball a rounder, wetter look but sometimes it can be hard to fit it in unless the eyes are really wide open.

13. Highlights. Eyes are wet and shiny so they get really strong, bright highlight spots, which I paint in with hard, variable-width brush. I'll be honest here - this part is still something of a mystery to me and I usually wind up redrawing the highlights several times in different ways before I find something that looks "right".

14. Colored linework and eyeshadow. I nearly always use pure black linework around the edges of the eyes with just a little flesh color towards the inner edge. I use an airbrush to add some eyeshadow color to the eyelids, using a little soft black around the outer edges of the eyes if I want a more dramatic look.

15. For the eyelashes, I import the eyelash linework and use it as the mask in a folder. Inside the folder, I place a solid black layer at the bottom and a grey layer with its own mask above it.

16. To give the eyelashes shape, I use a soft, variable-width airbrush to add a few thin streaks of grey in the grey layer of my lashes folder. The idea is to suggest a little sidelighting on the individual hairs of the eyelashes. Then I switch to a rounder airbrush and very softly erase the gray closest to the eyeball, so that the lines fade softly, suggesting slight shading from the angle of the lashes. Then I switch to softly brightening the gray along the outer edge of the lashes to pick up a little more shape.