How to Draw Eyes in Procreate (Structure First, Then Line)

Most people draw an eye by starting with the almond shape, adding lashes, and wondering why it looks flat. In her Portrait Academy course, Freya does it the other way around: she builds a small grid of guide lines first, and the eye almost draws itself inside it.

Here is her method, from the guide lines through two drafts to the final inked line.

Why Structure Comes First

Freya calls the eyes the most important part of a portrait, and she means it structurally, not sentimentally: get the eyes wrong and the likeness is gone, no matter how pretty the lashes are.

"I think the eyes are the most important part of portrait drawing. For a great portrait, we should have great eyes, because eyes express the emotions of the person."

Freya, in the Portrait Academy chapter "Draft: Eyes"

So before a single eyelash, she maps where everything sits.

Step 1: Draw the Guide Lines

Work from a reference photo cropped to just the eyes. Add a new layer, pick any bright color (Freya uses pink), and grab her Peppermint brush.

1. Draw a horizontal line through the center of both eyes. It should slant with the eyes, running from one outer corner to the other. This is your main line.
2. Add a second horizontal line at the inner arch of the eyebrows, parallel to the first. Freya keeps it mostly for reference.
3. Draw the vertical axis down the middle of the face, passing between the eyebrows and through the middle of the nose.
4. Drop vertical lines at the inner and outer corner of each eye, all parallel to the axis.
5. Add a line across the upper eyelids and one across the waterline. Freya admits this is cheating a little, but it tells you exactly how the eyelids curve.

Then reproduce the same grid on your drawing area, measuring each gap against the reference. Freya measures with her fingers on the screen, checking whether one section is the same, half, or one and a half times the size of another. When a line lands slightly wrong, she doesn't restart. She says fix it, it's fixable, and nudges it up.

Step 2: Draft 1, the Rough Eye

Add a layer and name it Draft 1. Color doesn't matter here (Freya uses green) because this layer gets deleted later.

Now place each part of the eye against the grid, checking the reference constantly:

1. Find the inner corner next to its vertical line and stroke the upper lid from there.
2. Draw the waterline separately. Freya points out it doesn't meet the outer corner line, because it's like another layer of skin, not part of the same edge.
3. Mark the eyelid crease. Look for where it starts, where it peaks, and where it ends.
4. Place the iris as a circle exactly in the middle, using QuickShape: draw the circle, then press and hold so it snaps perfect. The pupil goes dead center inside it.
5. Sketch the lash direction. Lashes point straight up in the middle of the eye and spread out toward the sides.
6. Add the highlight, what Freya calls the expression of the eye, and shade the iris a little so it reads as an eyeball.

She also strokes a few light lines between the inner eye and the nose to show where the face slopes. Small marks, big difference in depth.

Step 3: Draft 2, Drawing Like You're Inking

Add another layer for Draft 2, switch to a dark color, and stay on the Peppermint brush. Freya's instruction here is to do everything as if you are inking for real: heavier weight on the upper lid, a lighter touch at the inner corner, lashes fanning left and right of center.

This draft is a rehearsal. When the real inking comes, you've already drawn every line once.

Step 4: Inking

Hide the reference and old layers, drop Draft 2's opacity, and add a layer named Inking. Freya inks with her Freya Inking Pen Sharp brush, and offers two swaps:

• If you're nervous about thick lines, use the Super Sharp brush for slim strokes, especially under the eye.
• To make the eyelid crease stand out, switch to the Technical Pen regular just for that line.

Keep the bottom of the eye light. Lashes stay thin: up in the middle, slanting left on the left side, right on the right, with the curved ones dipping down slightly before flicking up.

For the iris, you can add radiating lines for texture. Freya draws four lines first, then gently fills in a few more, some short, some long. Her warning is worth quoting: don't put too many, it will look scary. She usually leaves them out entirely because she prefers clean color when painting.

Different Eyes Need Different Lines

In the companion tracing chapter, Freya works through four different pairs of eyes, and the differences are the real lesson.

Deep-set eyes get a heavier lid line. A crease along the lower eyelid must be traced even when it's faint, because, as she puts it, if you skip it, it will look like someone else's eye. Some eyes are oval rather than round. Monolid eyes are sharper, point slightly downward, and carry less visible waterline, so the upper lid does more of the work.

Eyes from the side confuse people most, and her fix is to simplify: the lid is roughly triangular, the eyeball behind it curves like a crystal ball, and from that angle the lashes point downward, not outward.

Her tracing rule applies to all four: trace everything with a single line, and keep to a few key lines. Messy drafts make messy inking.

Keep Going

If your first eye looks stiff, that's normal. Freya says it directly in the course: she makes it look easy because she's been doing this for a very long time, and your hand needs time to become steady.

These two chapters are a small slice of Portrait Academy, where the same draft-then-ink method covers eyebrows, the nose, lips, hair, and finally the full face, plus the coloring that brings it all to life. If the structure-first approach clicked for you here, the course is that approach applied to an entire portrait 💛