How to paint animal eyes

Hi it’s Anna Mason.

In this episode of Nature Studio TV, I’m going to show you how to paint shiny, realistic animal eyes in watercolour.

We’ll start with my 5 top tips for painting eyes, and then I’ll give you a detailed overview of how I painted
the reflective, 3D eye of this sweet Spaniel dog.

The eyes are the most important part of an animal portrait, so what I’m about to share with you can help you to bring more life and realism to your own pet and animal portraits.

So let’s start with tip 1 – work larger than life. When you look really closely at any eyes, you can usually see a variety of shapes and shades. It’s very hard to paint all of those details at life size or smaller.

By working at a larger scale, you stand a much better chance of achieving a realistic result.

Before you begin, closely observe all of those small shapes that make up the eyes. Because eyes are spherical, it’s important to make sure they look 3D and rounded.

The way to do this is to pay close attention to the angles of the shapes and reflections. Get those right, and the eyes will look curved and shiny.

My third tip is to start with an accurate and detailed outline drawing. If you take the time to make an accurate outline drawing before you begin painting, it’ll really help you to place the reflections and shapes in the right positions and it WILL save you time in the painting stage.

Take a look at what I chose to include in my outline drawing for this Spaniel’s eye.

When I’m working on an animal painting, I’ll often paint the eyes to a near-completed stage early on, so tip 4 is to do paint the eyes early.

It can motivate you to keep painting when you see the subject of your portrait looking back at you!

Before you use dark paint on the eyes though, you need to make sure any paler surrounding areas have been painted.

Otherwise, if you were to place a watery wash of a paler colour next to the completed eyes, the dark particles of pigment could bleed into the lighter areas, which you don’t want.

As a portrait progresses, I often revisit areas where I can see they need to be darker, and I do this with the eyes too. This is because tone or value – that is, how dark an area appears – is relative to the area around it.

So tip 5 is not to go too dark too soon so that you can come back to darken the eyes later. Leave yourself room for manoeuvre by not painting the eyes quite as dark as you think they’ll need to end up. That way you can make sure the entire portrait is tonally balanced. If you painted the eyes really dark in the beginning, you wouldn’t be able to do this.

With these tips in mind, let’s now take a look at how I approached the painting process for the Spaniel’s eye:
I began the painting by mapping out the different shapes of colour using pale washes. I used my tiny brushes for this, to help me to work in a detailed way even in this watery stage. I had already completed this step for the rest of the portrait before I worked on the eyes so I wouldn’t risk the dark paint from the eyes bleeding into the lighter fur area.

I matched the paints to palest version I could see in each colour area of the eye. I let that layer dry and then, using a second wash in the same colours, painted everywhere except for the highlight areas, so I could now see where they need to be. Preserving the highlights is important for creating shine and that curved form.
Once that was dry I went in with a much darker, thicker black mix to pick out the darkest shapes and establish the tonal range.

With those dark tones in place, I could then unite both ends of the tonal range by working on the midtones with slightly paler mixes. I could now see that I needed to darken the lightest tones some more, which in turn showed that I needed to darken the darkest tones.

Once I was happy with the tones, I then added some more dark details

Next, I darkened up the fur AROUND the eye. This helped give the eye context and to made it easier to see how much darker it could be taken next.

When I was happy with the eyes, I worked on the rest of the portrait, gradually darkening the fur and nose. Once those areas looked dark enough, I revisited the eyes once more for a touch of darkening, then I was satisfied that the eyes were finished.

I really hope you’ve found this mini class helpful and that you’re feeling inspired to give these tips a go.

A full length video class of this dog portrait is available now with Nature Studio membership. If you’ve enjoyed this mini class, please subscribe to Nature Studio TV, then pop over to NatureStudio.com where you can sign up for Free Classes and find loads of free resources to help you capture the beauty of your furry friends on your paper.

Thanks so much for watching and I’ll see you soon.