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Writer's picturenanochandraws (Chiyoneee_)

Coloring Eyes Digitally (Applicable to all applications)

Updated: Apr 21, 2021

Is it your first time in digital drawing? Then you're in the right place! I'll be teaching you how to color eyes. You can use Ibispaint, Procreate, Medibang, or any applications that allows you to have more layers and activate layer settings i.e. multiply, add, color dodge, etc.





Let's get right into the tutorial! So firstly, you must have a drawn line art first. You could keep the details at low opacity as your guide or a simple contour line of the drawing is fine. Make sure this layer is on top of everything else in your layers panel.



Second, you add a new layer below the line art layer. This is to make sure that your colored layers and line art layer won't overlap. This was a mistake I did when I was just starting in digital. I thought they make the lines and color it in one layer---though there is a so-called "one-layer challenge" but still, they're layering their colors before adding a new one---and so when I made a mistake and tried to erase the color, the line art gets erased as well. Depending on your style, if you want a lineless drawing, I can make a tutorial for that.



After drawing the sclera, add a new layer above it. We can hide the sclera layer for now. After adding the new layer, choose the color of your choice for the iris. You may need to choose the mid tone colors for this. I'll have a separate discussion for tones, values, and color theory so stay tuned ! Back to the topic, you can color it simply for now.



After coloring it, you can unhide the sclera layer and then add a new layer, at least 3 layers above the iris colored layer and set that layer to multiply. This is for the layer under the eyelids, indicating a shadow to emphasize the depth of the eyes.


NEVER USE GREY COLORS FOR THIS ONE--


--if you don't want your colors to look dull. Always find complimenting colors. You could use lighter hues in shading something white. I always use light blue for white shirts for work, uniforms, but for the eyes, I use very light purple for this.


TIP: If you want to color without erasing the excess strokes, add a new layer on top of the main color layer and use clipping tool to clip the upper layer to the main color layer that you choose. When you try to draw on a clipped layer, you won't see any strokes everywhere except for the main color layer that you chose as a base for this stroke. It is like a masking effect and it saves you time from erasing unnecessary strokes from your drawing. See the video below to see what I mean.






You can now add a little details of the eyes. Here, I emphasized the iris and the shape of the pupil. You can also opt for this since this is a free style one, you can draw any shape of the iris for this.






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