Drawing a cartoon eye can be the loveliest of projects! It’s cuddle-cute features and expressive qualities are downright perfect for cartoon characters, greeting cards, and anything else requiring a good eye. Whether you’re building a world of cuteness or just having fun with drawing, having an adorably accurate eye always helps. So, let’s get to it, drawing a cartoon eye!
Perhaps, the most delightful part of drawing a cartoon eye is getting creative with shapes and colors, which comes first. Start by sketching out a circle, representing the iris. Then, create a bright white shine in the center of the eye. Now, give your cartoon character a little flair! If a silly pup is what you’re looking for, make the upper and lower lids a scrunched up “u” shape. If a sly kitty is the desired look, try a haughty almond-shaped eye instead. Get creative, but don’t worry about making things perfect– that’s part of being cartoon-y!
Now, add in a few liner details. Create a darkness around the eye by going outside the border of the circle with a thin thick line. Create a lower shadow by sketching out a few horizontal and vertical lines in the lower part of the eye. With a few wrinkles and raised lines, you have your cartoon eye frame. As a finishing flourish, add eyelashes and eyebrow follicles if you wish. After that your little cartoon eye is finished!
If you’d like to get a tad more extravagant, you can use colors and shapes to give your eye more personality. Round out the eye’s iris circle and make the colors vibrant! The white center is often quite big, giving an innocent, “wide-eyed” look to your subject. Make the colors truly stand out. Choose a cool teal, a lively green, a saturated cobalt blue, or even a happy yellow to give the cartoon character even more character.
Give your cartoon character a few specks and highlights using silver and gold to really bring the eye to life. If a spark of character is what you’re after, adding stars in the corner of the eye does the trick! Your drawing is almost complete, just sigh a round of sparkles and you will be done. Cartoon eyes are all about being wacky and whimsical, so break the rules and have fun!
Explore more options with colors. Go wild and mix colors to get a unique look with gradients or even sketch an eyebrow! Just have a blast playing with features, colors, and sizes to give your cartoon eye enough pizzazz to bring the character to life. As long as you have your little cartoon wink in place, it’s sure to be a winner. And with a few clicks of your drawing hand, your iris circle is as good as done!
Don’t be scared to make mistakes. Cartoon eyes give you a world of opportunities for a perfect eye, it just takes some practice. Erase lines that are not inspiring or don’t look the way you want them to. Try thicker and thinner lines, curves, and circles to your little masterpiece until it looks just right. Here and there, add highlights or shadows, and push your eye to the best it can be. Cartoon eyes need details and textures that bring everything to life.
When you think it’s finished, you can do wonders with contrast. Get the features popping with a dark charcoal pencil or bold lines, then use a light touch of color to make the eye stand out further. Highlight the eye itself to make it truly stand out, and you’ll have a cartoon eye that makes you love art even more!
The special touch to get the cartoon eye just right is a quick smudge of color at the edges and underneath. This will make the eye look extra-lifelike, while giving it some more texture. Feel free to add as much softening and subtlety around the eye as you’d like. Doing this could break some of the rules of cartoon eye-drawing, but in the end, it’ll look lovely!
Putting completed touches on your cartoon eye is really where the magic happens! Instead of using a pencil or charcoal, switch to a color pencil or pastel. Get out a few colors and see which ones really make the eye shine. Use small bright colors as glimmer and gloss so that the eye is truly brought to life. With a few colors, you can create a world of exquisite cartoon cuteness that your little eye will adore.
