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Hello my name is Magdalena Prosowska
I welcome you to my ten minute video
tutorial about how to paint realistic looking eyes.
The secret to painting good looking eyes lies in understanding the anatomy.
You need to keep in mind
that the eyeball is a sphere object
and the iris is a cavity.
By surface you can imagine it as going inside the ball.
That's why we get a shadow on iris
in this spot and shading on the eyeball will be here.
And also keep in mind that
the eyelids surround eyeball
so they follow the geometry of the sphere.
I already created a very simple sketch
of the eye and I will just grab any of
the painting brushes and start shading.
It is always smart to have a
small mirror on your desk when you are
painting faces just to look into it
and get the fresh reference of the surface
of the feature you are painting.
While I am painting I am trying
to match the direction of the stroke
to the direction of the surface to emphasize it.
Thanks to Corel having very
natural-looking brushes,
following the surface with the brush strokes
is very natural and gives a traditional touch
to the painting.
It is important to remember that the eyelids have a thickness
so the top eyelid will drop shadow
on the eyeball, and the bottom eyelid
will capture some of the light.
What I can recommend to everyone who wants to paint
more attractive faces is to watch other
tutorials about how to do makeup
because doing makeup is an art in itself
of how to create more appealing looking eyes.
The best looking eyes are
are not the natural eye, but the eyes that have
makeup on top of it so understanding how
and why makeup is applied it really
helps make eyes in your portraits
look really great.
Some of those decisions that I made
are not based on realism
but applied makeup on top of it.
For example, this highlight on the top
of the eyelid is not the color of the skin
it's actually a light eyeshadow.
I really recommend just looking through
some makeup videos and getting to know
how to apply it really helps out.
I turned off the sketch at this point.
I really don't need it any longer
and I will just focus on shading
and creating the correct surfaces.
When it comes to painting the edge,
control is really important.
By edge I don't only mean the outline
of the neighboring object like the edge of the face,
and beginning of the hair and the edge
can also be inside the object.
For example, the curvature of the nose
is an edge and it goes from hard to soft.
Looking for those kind of edges
in the face really brings out the dimensionality.
As I mentioned earlier, the iris is a cavity
so it will have a shadow at the top part
and it will catch light
at the bottom part.
When you observe the iris in reality you will clearly
see that there is no hard edge
between the white of the eye and the color of the iris
but there is actually a soft edge.
When I really want to have
a very hard edge for the blackness of the iris
I will just grab a selection
select a circle and color it black.
For the eyelashes I will create a new layer
because it's much easier to edit
or if I want to fix something
it is always better to have it as a separate object
from the main painting
instead of overpainting.
I am flipping the canvas horizontally
to see any mistakes in my painting
and I instantly see that I made one of
the iris too small so I will grab
a selection and rescale it
and fit it to the specific place I want it to be,
and blend any edges that were created
in the process.
The final touch is the reflection
in the eye. To create the reflection
I created a new layer
and grabbed a selection
and I want to create a window reflected in the eye.
and a shadow of the lashes
on the reflection
and I just fill it with a soft edged brush.
And the same process for the bottom reflection.
When it comes to the eyebrows
there is a really cool trick regarding how to set
the placement of the eyebrows.
You should start with the corner of the eye
and the curvature of the eyebrow should
align with the top of the eyebrow
and the line from the nose through the iris.
This eyebrow has a neutral expression
because my eyebrow on the right
has a raised gesture that does not follow the rule.
Keep in mind that it still starts with the
corner of the eye.
Now I am adding the last touches to the hair
some of this I overpainted in the progress of painting
and I am pretty much done.
Thank you for watching.
I hope you enjoyed it.
Please leave any comments you have
for questions regarding the process.
Have a great day!
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