You Can Draw in 30 Days: The Fun, Easy Way to Learn to Draw in One Month or Less (54 page)

7. Draw your gorgeous eyebrow. Draw individual hair starting at the bridge of the nose and moving across the brow. Draw with flowing single lines, angling the hairs more horizontally as you move away from the nose. Begin shading the eye along the inside of the eyelids.

8. Look into your mirror. Look closely at your eyelashes. Notice how your eyelashes are clustered in small groups of two or three, not just single hairs. Notice how the eyelash groups start on the very near thickness edge of the upper lids. Notice how your eyelashes curve away from your lid, following the contour of your eye. Draw a few groups of three eyelashes. Pay attention to your placement. Be sure to draw them at the very near edge of the lid. Pay attention to the direction of the curve of the lashes. Be careful not to draw too many eyelashes, and avoid drawing them too vertically (or else you risk creating what I call the “spider effect”).

The next step is shading. This is the lesson step that really pops your eyeball right off the page! There are five specific areas to shade. The first of the five shading areas is directly under the top eyelid, the full length of the eyeball. The second spot is along the bottom lid, above the thickness line, directly on the eyeball. Keep this very light shading at first; you can build up more dark contrast later. (If you start too dark, it will look like some very heavy Goth black eye makeup, unless of course this is the look that you are going for.) The third area is the little crease at the top of your eyelid, the line that separates your eyelid from your eye socket. The fourth shading area is the bottom of the eye socket, darker in the center corner near the nose and tear duct. This shadow is blended and falls into the cheek.

As Leonardo da Vinci used blended shading to define Mona Lisa’s eyes without any hard edge dark lines, you too can use blended shading to soften and define your 3-D eye. Be sure to darken and blend the fifth area of shading in all the tiny nook and crannies in the corner of the eye socket and eyelid.

I love drawing eyes. The more you draw, the more you will enjoy them. Eyes are the single most important element in drawing the human, animal, or creature face. Draw several more eyes in your sketchbook, a few more from looking in the mirror, and a few from searching “How to draw an eye” on YouTube. There are some incredible amateur video tutorials you will thoroughly enjoy.

Take a peek at how these students practiced this eye lesson.

T
he human hand, our most expressive appendage! In this lesson we will pull together all of the Nine Fundamental Laws of Drawing that we have learned so far and apply them to this drawing. Let’s review each of the laws and how they apply to this lesson.

Take a look at the illustration of the hand below and notice the following:

Now let’s start drawing the human hand of creativity!

1. Take a look at the drawing at left. Now hold up your left hand in this same position. Looking at your hand, notice how your thumb and fingers are attached to the palm of your hand. Notice how your palm is the shape of an opened foreshortened square. Draw this opened foreshortened square.

2. Take a look at your left hand in the above position again. Notice how your arm slightly tapers to your wrist. Draw this slightly tapered wrist, using size to create depth.

3. Looking at your left hand, see how your thumb bends away from your wrist in two distinct segments. Draw these two segments. Notice how each segment has a slight curve.