Meanwhile in the Art Classroom: Drawing Eyes

This is part one of a four part series on how to draw the features of the face. In our art classes, we have a wonderful packet that we put together to guide our students through learning the different facial features. However, rather than giving them a huge packet, we broke it down into four parts: eyes, nose, mouth, whole face. This lesson we only focused on the eyes and chose to only give the pages pertaining to the eyes. This is not as overwhelming for the students.

First, we talked about eyes and how to notice specific details in eyes. Eyes can express so much emotion and the features around the eyes. For example, wrinkles and shadows can help us to identify age and gender.

The sheet above is what we used as our guide for the step-by-step process to drawing a realistic human eye. In the order of: left column down to the right column and down, we are able to break down the drawing steps into 11 easy steps.

Credit for this next step goes 100% to my teammate. The idea was easy, efficient, and works great with the students. Using one sheet of computer copy paper students used folding techniques to make two columns and four rows. The top row was the "pre-test" row. Without any guidance or instruction, students were asked to draw a set of eyes to the best of their ability.

Next, I demonstrated how to draw the eye using our 11 step guide. As I explained how to do a step, I drew it, and then the students would follow along and draw it as well. This allowed us to communicate and problem solve as we went.

After we completed one set of eyes as a class, the rest of our time was allotted to practicing. The students used the next two rows to draw practice sets of eyes. If the eyes they were drawing did not get better, or if they did not look like they followed the steps, the students were asked to use the back side of their paper to continue practicing.

This process worked really well because it allows the students to see their immediate growth! This allows for intrinsic motivation for some students.

Our next lesson will be drawing the nose.