How to draw the Eyes and Ears

Hi there, today I would be discussing on the structure of two facial features, the eye and ear, talking about the various features of each anatomically and how much they can vary. Read through till the end and I guarantee you'll learn a thing or two ;-)

The Eyes

The eyes are the windows to the soul, this is also true in drawing. Not to encourage bad drawing habits but having beautiful eyes on a poorly structured still looks beautiful. The eyes are very expressive in nature, the most expressive facial feature in my opinion. Therefore it would be great to know how to draw this feature.

Anatomy of the eye

I love anatomy, I love peeping under the hood of car engines, to me that's where the beauty sits. The anatomy of the eye is that of a sphere.

For vision we have the pupil of the eye that accommodate light by contracting and dilating.

As a result of the spherical nature of the eyes. It has by default a shading on the sphere making the white of the eyes the Sclera not pure white but with a subtle tonal gradation
The eyes are protected by various mechanisms. The brown ridge of the skull already protects the eyes from falling objects. The eyelids are also quick to block at incoming danger

The eyelids

The eyelids consists of a top and lower eyelid each with a top and bottom plane. It is important to indicate these as they add depth and solidity to the drawing.

By default they wrap round the eyeballs.
The eyes are separated also by a measurement of an eye length in between them. That is an important note for portraiture.

The iris affects the eyelids in the course of their motion. The shift the eyelids creating a visible top and bottom plane.
The iris is a convex protrusion from the eye ball.

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The Ear

The ear of old people are often soft and that of young people hard, this is because they are made of cartilage and these cartilage weakens with age. The entire external ear is made of cartilage. The ear is a little more regular compared to other facial features so it is good to study the regular ear as they don't vary much that learning the anatomy would be required.
The ear is shaped in the best way to collect sounds. It has same inclination as the nose when looked at from profile

It is a fun shape to draw and I hope you agree on that too!

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