How can I stop drawing eyes too big?

Over the years, I’ve noticed that I tend to draw eyes too large and I’d like advice on how to stop that. I do the guidelines that you’re supposed to do but that does not seem to help. How can I make sure the eyes are not too large?

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Do you mean for illustration or life drawing?

Practice drawing lots of eyes from references and compare…if you are talking about drawing eyes from imagination…that’s a completely different matter, but drawing lots from references might make you more aware…

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Thanks guys,

@Mythmaker real life portrait drawing.

@kacart I have done a lot of drawing of eyes but, for some reason, they turn out being too large. :confused: I’ll try doing more. I get the width but sometimes the eye height ends up too large.

It’s hard to say without observing you work.

Maybe slow down and spend more time looking at your reference.

Try to see past the features and focus instead on the shapes formed and distances between points.

Keep looking back and forth so you can see how your drawing compares to the reference.

If you’re using a photo you can flip it along with your canvas to help you notice disparities.

Don’t forget you can use the transform tools such as warp and liquify to make corrections in Krita.

edit: Forgot to add any emojis!.. :nerd_face: :upside_down_face: :partying_face: :wink::+1: …phew! Balance is restored!

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Sometimes the reason we draw something too large is because we spend too much time focused on the details of it. The focus is like zooming in - and we transfer that to the drawing.

Not sure if that’s the case for you, but there is a way to help alleviate by identifying large shapes first. If you can identify the eye sockets first, then you can fit the eyes into them. A good exercise is to try and draw/paint the face in the least amount of strokes where it can still be identified as a face. Once the large shapes are identified, you can fit the details inside the shapes (some people refer to this as the envelope method).
This is an exercise at getting better - it likely won’t be pretty the first few times. :smiley:

example:

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Thanks, I’ll try that. :+1:

Thanks, I’ll try and keep that in mind. :+1::grin::grin::slightly_smiling_face::parasol_on_ground::paintbrush::art::paw_prints::paw_prints::paw_prints::paw_prints::paw_prints:

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when I do my sketch, to start with, some times, I’ll notice eyes are not right, not where I want them or too big, I use the crop tool cut them, then paste them back in, and then the transform selector you can move, adjust resize warp as needed.

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@Hoppa_Joel I’ll try that too. :+1:

It’s subconsсious carving for anime stylization! :grin:
Just joking, I think it may be useful to study shadow maps (idk the proper name). Anyways, the point is to replicate reference with shadow spots only. So you will be forced to focus on proportions using abstract shapes without tiny details. And I belive, it could help to memorize natural facial proportions and particularly the eyes size.

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Probably not very helpful, but I agree with @kacart. Practice, practice, and more practice! And visualizing very clearly in your head what kind of result you’d like to get. That’s what I usually do.

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