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Hey guys! It’s been a while but I’m back with a new tutorial! Learn how to draw this realistic crying eye from scratch in just 12 steps. This condensed tutorial was made using screenshots taken from my hour-long video tutorial on Youtube. Please refer to the teary eye video if you need any extra explanations for any of the steps below 🙂

Tools I used:

Kneaded Eraser: For erasing fine details or blemishes. (Learn how to make one from scratch!)

Mono Solid Eraser: For erasing quickly and cleanly.

Staedtler Graphite Pencils: 2H,HB,2B,4B,6B

Blending Stump: Great for blending details and dark zones. (Learn how to make one)

Tissue Paper: Great for blending evenly. Helpful for lightening areas shaded too dark because the tissue lightens the drawing slightly as you blend.

Canson Drawing Paper: This paper allows for a lot of layering.

White Gel Pen: Optional. To make your brightest zones pop!

SmudgeGuard Glove: Drawing glove to prevent smudging and the transfer of oils from your hand.

Note: If you only have a school pencil (HB) and solid eraser, you can still achieve similar results, except your drawing may appear a bit lighter in value.

Step 1: Construct the Eye Shape

Lightly draw the shape of an eye using your HB pencil. Draw an eyelid crease above it. If you need help with this step, the video tutorial breaks it down further.

Since we’re going to add a lot of detail to this eye, I would recommend you draw it a similar size as mine, which is about 12-13cm across.

Step 2: Outline the Iris and Pupil

Draw a circle for the iris, making it roughly half the width of the eye. In the center of your iris, add smaller circle for the pupil, but don’t shade it in yet!

If you need help centering your pupil, draw a vertical and horizontal line through your iris. The point where the lines intersect marks where the pupil should go 🙂.

Step 3: Outline the Highlights in Your Eye

The magical part that makes an eye drawing look teary without overdoing the teardrops is the highlights. These are shiny areas that will make the watery parts of our eye glisten.

Let’s draw 3 groups of them…

1. Main Highlights: Outlined in blue for your reference, these rectangle shapes are a reflection of a pair of windows situated to the left side of our imaginary room. It is curved to support the illusion of a curved eyeball. I broke the shapes down from 2 to 3, but you can simplify it more if you want.
2. Waterline Highlights: Outlined in green, these two shapes are a squished version of the Main Highlights. I’m calling them Waterline Highlights because they are going to sit at the edge of some accumulated tears at the bottom of the eye, and we want these tears to glisten!
3. Inner Corner of the Eye Highlights: Outlined in purple. When our eyes well up with tears, they always collect at the inner corner of the eye because that’s where the tear duct is located. Let’s outline a big “U” shape to make this area really wet-looking.

Step 4: Shade the Pupil and Iris

Shade your pupil as dark as you can get it. I used a 6B pencil for this. If you are using a harder pencil like an HB, avoid pressing too hard because it can warp the paper and/or make it overly reflective.

Then shade your iris. Start with an even layer of graphite (4B) and then blend it with a tissue.

Then, using a 6B, shade a dark ring around your iris. Since my imaginary light source is shining down from above, the eyelid will cast a shadow along the very top of the eyeball. So let’s shade along the very top of the iris to account for this cast shadow.

I prefer to blend these dark parts with a blending stump because the tissue tends to lift graphite away, making the area lighter. The advantage with blending using a tissue is that it’s easier to work with if you are a beginner and the result looks smoother.

Step 5: Draw Iris Details Part 1

Still using a 6B pencil, shade a dark band along the very bottom of your iris for the accumulated tears. Only shade as high as your Waterline Highlights.

Next, draw a wavy ribbon around your pupil using a 4B pencil.

Step 6: Draw Iris Details Part 2

Within the ribbon that surrounds your pupil, draw a bunch of radiating lines. Then draw another identical ribbon around the first one. Where the ribbon juts out, draw lines that reach outward toward the edge of the iris.

Continue drawing a variety of wavy/squiggly lines radiating towards the edge of the iris. Lighten the spaces in between your pencil marks using your kneaded eraser if you want to make some of the spokes pop out (this increase in contrast can help make your eye look more captivating).

You can increase contrast further by darkening the edge of your iris and the cast shadow along the top using a 6B pencil.

Now let’s draw a reflection in our Main Highlights. In the bottom half of my Main Highlights, I’ve shaded an ambiguous wavy shape and purposefully blended that unevenly to make it look like there are some details reflected back. You’ll notice that I’ve added two extra highlights on the iris. I’ve also used my blending stump to blur the edges of some. I much prefer the softer, more subtle look. Please feel free to blend them however you’d like and add or remove parts based on your personal preference.

Step 7: Shade the Rest of the Eyeball (Eyewhites)

Make sure the rest of your eyeball is shaded in. We want the lightest areas of this entire drawing to be our highlights.

Shade the far left and far right of your eyeball gradually darker using an HB pencil. Then blend with a tissue.

Shade along the very top of the eyeball to make it look like the eyelid is casting a shadow. Shade lightly along the bottom of your eyeball as well to make it look curved.

Shade the inner corner of the eye pretty dark to convey depth, especially around the edges. Draw some lines/curves in this space and blend them well so they look like bumps and folds.

Step 8: Shade the Skin Around the Eyes

Note: This shading instruction is different from the video tutorial to keep things simple.

Using your 4B pencil, shade a light and even layer of graphite across all areas of skin around the eyes. Blend it well using a tissue wrapped around the padded part of your finger. Switch to a clean spot on your tissue often to prevent blotches. Be careful not to smudge the details inside the eye.

Then, for all the areas highlighted in blue below, shade darker to make the skin appear curved. Lighten your strokes gradually as you approach areas where the skin should be lighter. Shade the eyelid crease the darkest.

My imaginary light source comes from the top left, making the right side of the eye a little darker than the left side.

Step 9:  Tweaks and Optional Details to Make Your Eye Drawing More Realistic

Before we draw the eyelashes, it’s a good idea to look over your entire drawing to see if you’d like to fix anything as well as try to make your shading smoother. Keep in mind that after you’ve drawn the eyelashes, it will be more difficult to blend the skin because you will need to blend around each lash, or risk smudging them.

If you look closely, you can see I’ve added some subtle squiggly blood vessels along the eyeball using my 2H pencil. This is a totally optional detail to help make the eye more realistic! If you darken the blood vessels, it can help make the eye look more sad, since our eyes do become more red when we cry.

Inside the iris, I used my eraser to lighten more spokes at random. I also added large bright patches using my kneaded eraser rounded to a blunt tip and dragged lightly in the same direction the spokes are pointing.

I also added 3 new subtle highlights surrounding the one at the inner corner of the eye. If you like how yours looks currently, feel free to keep it that way!

Step 10: How to Draw Eyelashes

For my eyelashes, I’m using a 2B pencil. Test your pencils to see which one you prefer. I chose the 2B because it stays sharp for a long time, giving me clean strokes, and the value is dark enough for my preference.

Draw your eyelashes along the eyelid’s ledge. If you struggle with drawing eyelashes, just think of them as “J” shapes. Vary your “J” shapes from narrow to wide and from deep to shallow.

To make your lashes look realistic and natural, try to avoid any repetitive patterns. You can do that by varying the length, the angle, making them cross over each other, or taper them together at the ends for example.

Make sure your lashes are shorter, thinner and lighter the closer they are to the inner corner of the eye.

Layer on more and more eyelashes until you are satisfied.

Do the same for your lower lashes. You might find that spreading your lashes out and jumping back and forth randomly will help you to draw more natural-looking lashes as opposed to drawing them all in order from one side to the other.

I like to keep my lower lashes more sparse. If you are planning to draw lots of teardrops, you can taper many lashes together because hair likes to stick together when wet.

Give your eyelashes some shadows and add texture to the skin around the base of each hair. This subtle detail can be acheived by lightly drawing circular/loopy patterns along the top and bottom eyelid ledges where the eyelash roots are. Make your circles lighter and more subtle where the lashes are few and far between.

Step 11: Tweak Your Eye Drawing

Take a few steps away from your drawing, or better yet, take a long break to reset your brain. Now look at your entire drawing to see if you want to darken, lighten, add, or fix anything.

I decided to add some more lashes to the top eyelid and make some of them longer. I also darkened the eyelid crease to increase the contrast, as well as darken the eyelid cast shadow along the entire eyeball. Do whatever you feel like to make the eye most appealing to you.

Step 12: How to Draw A Realistic Teardrop on Your Sad Eye

First pick where you’d like the teardrop to fall. Ideally an area in between lashes. Make sure the skin in your chosen area is shaded and blended well. This is to make sure the teardrop shows up well. Keep in mind that the lighter the skin, the less prominent the teardrop will appear because a lack of contrast.

1. Now erase a teardrop shape. Make the bottom of your teardrop as round as you can.
2. Consider where the main light source in your drawing is coming from. In this example, it’s coming from the top left, so we’ll draw a shadow on the bottom right, below our teardrop.
3. When you blend, make your shadow fade out gradually the further it is from the teardrop. I used a tissue to achieve a soft fade. As you shade and blend, try to keep the edges of your teardrop clean and crisp!
4. Identify the area that will be illuminated inside your teardrop. This area will be right against the cast shadow you just drew. Shade inside your teardrop while avoiding the illuminated zone. You’ll want to shade darkest at the very top of the teardrop and lighter gradually as you move downward. Only shade as dark as the surrounding skin. Blend while making sure the top of our teardrop is blended extra well. Our goal is to make the top of the teardrop blend in with the skin tone to make it look as though the tear is dripping down.
5. Next, use your eraser to create mini highlights that loosely match your Main Highlights. Since the teardrop is small, you can simplify the shape as much as you need. If the shapes are ambiguous, they may look like blobs.
6. Optional: You can use a white gel pen to boost the lightest parts of your teardrop. You can also erase a little wedge shape in the cast shadow under the tear to convey light exiting the teardrop.

An optional detail to make the bottom eyelid look more watery is to erase blob-shaped highlights around/above your teardrop.

Now take a step back from your drawing to see it as a whole. Do you want to tweak anything? If you want your eye to pop more, try making the dark areas darker and the light ones even lighter. You can only erase so much, so try using some correction fluid or a white gel pen to really make those highlights really pop!

A Few Last Notes

This tutorial has been more than a year in the making, partly because editing a 10-hour raw recording into something watchable takes a surprising amount of time and energy haha. I wanted this written version to simplify the process even further, giving you enough steps without overwhelm.

But I’m still learning how to balance depth and simplicity, so your feedback would be amazing. If you watched the Teary Eye Youtube video, did this written version support you? Does it make things easier to understand? Your insight will help me improve future tutorials here on my blog so I can support you in the best way possible.

Thank you!

If you want more guided practice, I’ve made a companion workbook (ebook) which includes: printable pages of this exact eye that you can practice on, shading exercises, eyelash exercises, and more to help you build confidence and improve your technique. Click here to learn more!

Happy drawing!

Darlene