Painting Eyes

How to paint eyes for your rendered images

By Dorothy Mitchell

 Copyright 2009, Dreamlight AB, Waldemar Belwon You may not resell or give away this ebook, in whole or in part, modified or non modified, in any form, printed or digital or any other manner, unless given written permission from Waldemar Belwon, Dreamlight AB.

PAINTING THE EYE

Brush size Hard brush Soft brush

In this tutorial I used Photoshop, but there are some references at the end of this tutorial, where you can find the corresponding tools in Photoshop Elements and Gimp. Try to do each part of the eye on a new, transparent layer. That way, each individual part of the eye can be easily adjusted later. Click here to create a new layer.

Brush Opacity and Flow

Elliptical Marquee

Brush

Use the elliptical marquee tool to make a circular selection, then, fill it with gray, using the fill tool.

Paint around the edge with a soft, red brush.

Reduce the size of the brush and paint in some blood vessels.

Fill Dodge / Burn

Use the elliptical marquee tool again and fill it with the color youd like for the iris.

Paint in the texture. (see page 5 Iris Texture.) If you keep the iris selected, it will help you to avoid painting over the edge.

Add a second, lighter color in the center.

Color
Use a large, round, black brush to paint the pupil. Use the burn tool to darken the edges of the iris and eyeball. Now use the dodge tool to lighten the sides.

For the reflection, paint a white streak across the eye using a soft brush.

Then with the eraser tool set to 20% flow, erase two vertical, and one horizontal line to give the appearance of a window reflection.

Instead of erasing a window shape, you could erase a building shape using a pre-made brush.

Here Ive used a tree brush with the eraser tool.

Open your rendered image and erase the the eye using the eraser tool.

Select all your eye layers. (Hold the shift key while clicking on the layers.) Or you can merge them if you no longer want to make any changes to the eye. Place the eye layers, (or layer) under the rendered image layer. If necessary, adjust the size of the eye by using the transform tool.

Dont spend time making two eyes, make one, then duplicate it for the other side.

Move / Transform tool

Make sure Show Transform Controls is ticked. To move or scale a layer, first click on the Move / Transform tool then you will see a dotted line around the layer. Click on one of the corner or side boxes, then you will be able to manipulate the layer. Click the tick at the top when your done. 2

Right clicking on the box will give you more options.

Change the color of the iris as desired by adjusting the Hue and Saturation settings.

Image - Adjustments - Hue / Saturation

Make sure you have the iris layer selected first.

SOME TIPS

Paint a soft shadow around the eye lid, and for added realism, paint in some white highlights, this helps give the eye a wet look.

Layer effects Here, I painted a dark brown color for the iris. Then, on a new layer, set to color dodge, I painted over the iris, using a white, hard brush. Setting the layer to color dodge brought out some vivid colors from the iris layer underneath. Experiment with with different layer effects! To make cats eyes, enlarge the iris so that it fits most of the eye. For the pupil, use the elliptical marquee tool, fill the pupil with black, then use the move / transform tool to reduce the sides.

Use the move / transform tool to position the eyes, in the direction you want your character to be looking.

IRIS TEXTURE

For the iris in this tutorial, I painted squiggly lines in a circular pattern, then made a custom brush from it. I then loaded the custom brush and stamped and rotated the brush several times, using slightly different colors. You can use your own brushes or pre-made brushes, here's some examples below.

No iris.

All black.

Using styles and filters.

Experiment with the pupil shape too.

CREATING A CUSTOM BRUSH

How to create your own custom brushes using Photoshop.
First, paint the shape of the brush you want. Or select part of an image you would like to use as a brush. (Maximum size of 2500 pixels.) Here, I made a round pattern for the iris.

From the Edit menu, click Define Brush Preset. Choose a name for your brush and click ok.

Now, when you open your brushes, you will see your new brush at the bottom.

Make sure you save your brush by clicking here, then choosing Save Brushes.

Eye made with the eye brush.

Painted eye.

Eye as a brush.

Eye (from a brush) with the colored layer above it.

When youve painted your eye, you could make it into a brush. Here Ive made a brush from the painted eye. Then I made a new transparent layer above the eye brush layer and set the layer to color. I then painted the colors on to the color layer.
6

Eye brush

If you make any changes to your brush that you want to keep, click here to save a new preset of the brush.

For instance, here Ive changed the brush so that is scatters when I paint. I did this by checking the Scattering box in the Brushes palette. .

Then I clicked here to save a new preset of my brush.

Now I have both brushes, the first brush I made and the same brush again with the scattering setting.

Delete any brushes you dont want, then save your brushes using a unique name. For instance you could call them My brushes. Load these brushes whenever you want to add to them. (You may have to restart Photoshop to see your saved brushes). To delete a brush, right click on the brush you want to delete, then click Delete brush.

TOOLS USED IN THIS TUTORIAL

Where to find the corresponding tools in Photoshop Elements and Gimp.

Photoshop

Photoshop Elements
7

Gimp
1

1 1 2 3 4 5 3 2 4 6 5 6 7
Edit - Transform -Scale.

7 4 2 3 5 6

Or this tool
when Show Transform Controls is ticked.

Enhance - Adjust colorAdjust Hue / Saturation.

Colors - Hue - Saturation.

9 9

Image - Adjustments Hue / Saturation.

1 2 3

Elliptical Marquee Brush Eraser 8

4 5 6

Fill Tool
Dodge and Burn tool

7 8 9

Transform / Scale Hue / Saturation Layer Effects

Color

I hope youve enjoyed this tutorial. Thanks for following along.