Annie portrait in progress 3 - What do you see in this eye?

Annie’s eyes are finished. I never get tired of doing eyes, because the colors and reflections in them are so interesting. 

What do you see in this eye?

This is the right eye in the client’s reference photo — extracted from the rest of the photo so you can focus on just seeing what is there.

Focus on the colors, the shapes, and the values (value = lightness/darkness). All those unusual shapes on the eye are the reflections of what was in the environment around the dog. Often I can make out the windows and furniture of the room the dog was in, and sometimes a shape that is the person photographing the dog….distorted by the curve of the eyeball. 

Reflections on the surface of an eye are what make the eye look shiny. 

Below is a close-up of the right eye in the portrait.

To do reflections in an eye, just draw what you see. What is actually there in the photo, not what you think is there.

An eyeball will always have a highlight, usually bright white. That’s one of the things that makes an eye look “alive”. I try to make that highlight the brightest white I can get with colored pencils on colored paper, occasionally I’ll touch it with some opaque white paint to really bump up the whiteness. Sometimes it is the only true white in the whole portrait. The highlight being the only thing in the portrait that’s actually white, is one of the things that makes the eyes “pop”, that makes the eyes look so striking, in my portraits.

🎨 Prismacolor pencil on “Felt Grey” Canson Mi-Teintes paper. 18 x 23 inches.

"Annie"

Commissioned by Carolyn Martini, Gloria Kehoe, and Tammy Cunningham.