Faily tutorial: how to draw noses and eyes

[aredblush]

Apparently, posting my drawings here gave toodelicious the idea that I am able to hold a pencil the right way and she thought I could help her with realistic drawing of noses and eyes.
I aswered with:

mhm... noses and eyes are the hardest to draw.
It all depends on shape and shading. The trickiest part is getting the proportions right, and then replicating the shape.
To draw a nose it's important to remember that it's rarely outlined with marked lines (unless you're drawing a face seen from the side): you may stress the contours of the nostrils, but the bridge is usually drawn with soft shading. My advice is to start with a faint outline of the entire face, then work on the parts where the shadows are deeper and go on from there. Sometimes leaving the outline as part of the drawing is good, too, especially for the parts hit by the light: this way you can still see the shapes, but without making the drawing too "heavy".
The secret to draw realistic eyes is all in portraying their expressiveness, which is achieved by solid shading and a high highlight contrast. It's also important to remeber that eyes are wet, which means you'll have to draw their shinyness, too (this can be very very tricky so bear with it).
Looking up some reference picture might help you to individuate the lines you'll have to stress and the ones that will be "invisible".
Does this help? I hope it's not too incoherent. Explaining these things in English is not easy :(

Of course, that didn't make much sense. So she asked me if I could show her how to do it.
Therefore, I give you

(I'd like to point out that I haven't been doing this kind of drawing for at least 3 years, so it's very crappy!)

A Faily Tutorial: How to draw noses and eyes

Ok, first you have to choose a subject. Since I'm short a breathing model atm, I printed this picture of Willy Monfret, rugby player extraordinaire.



(ngl, I chose this one because at least, if the drawing came out crappy, I could attribute my failing to the fact that you can't replicate perfection...)

So, what you need is: a picture to copy, a couple of set squares and a pencil



The easiest way to copy a picture is to make a reference a grid. Measure the border of your picture and draw a tick every two cm (if you want to be more precise, do it every cm)



Do the same on the adiacent border



Then draw the parallel lines



till you get something like this



Replicate the grid on the sheet you want to draw on (in this case, I maintained the same proportions, but if you want to draw a larger version, you'll just have to do a grid of 3x3 or 4x4 swares instead of 2x2 like I did)

ON the reference picture, trace the main lines with a pen



These will be the lines that you'll have to copy on your sheet. The grid will help you a great deal!





Now that you have the main outline, you can procede to the fun part. Since I did this in a hurry, I'll explain how to draw with a pencil (if you want to paint a picture, the practical parts will be different, but the theory behind it is the same!). The best pencils to use are B or HB. If you have a "light" hand, you can use 2Bs or even 3Bs.

My advice is to start from the darker parts of your picture, not only because it will let you see straight away if there's something wrong with your drawing, but also because that way you'll be able to set the highest saturation for the shadow pallette, preventing you from drawing a "dark" picture (in painting, you'll have to start from the lightest parts instead, because if you mess up, covering light colours with darker ones is easier than the other way around)



Once you've filled those areas, it's time to teach your hand how to be soft. Remember that as much as comic characters sport triangular/line-y/round noses, in reality a nose can't be drawn with marked lines: it's all about shading and giving it a sense of depth. This means that you'll rarely draw the whorl on the rounded part at the base of the nose as an actual whorl; you will do it with a fine shading!
Start with a very light touch, following the darker lines on your reference picture.



then do it again untill you get the same shading that's on the original picture



Now that we're finished with the nose, we'll start with the eye.
As we did before, start with the darkest parts



and then colour the rest



Remeber: the secret to draw realistic eyes is capturing the expression. Also, remember that eyes are sphere (that's why they're called eyeballs!) and as such you have to shade them like you would a ball. Note that the darkest parts in the eye are the pupil, the upper part (because it's shaded by eyelashes) and the contour of the iris. And don't forget that eyes are wet! It means that you have to give them some reflections



once you're finished with the eye, start on the skin around it.



Now, compare your drawing with the original and see if there's something that must be changed or if it's good to be cleaned up a bit (we'll assume that mine is okay as it is, ok? ok.)



To get rid of the grid, it's better to use this amazing thing called a rubber pencil



if you don't have something like that, don't despair! Just cut a slice of your rubber off and use it to erase the lines of the grid where the whole rubber would ruin your drawing.



Erase all the lines and you'll have something like this



If you want to smooth the shading, wrap a handkerchief around your index finger and use it like a brush over the drawing



This is the finished result



Any questions?

ETA: if you want to see some good (and by good I mean mindblowingly amazing) realistic drawings, go here and check out samelastdream's portrait of Ryan Ross.

ETA2: Just found This tutorial on DA. Very useful and way better than mine :)