Not Amused (Patreon)

I've been studying a fair bit of anime drawings lately and one thing I've noticed is just how interesting the eyes always seem to be. It's pretty consistent, across many different artists, and it has been for as long as I've enjoyed anime. For the longest time, I've struggled to understand exactly HOW the artists create the effect. Even watching tutorials on it, I've never been able to wrap my brain around it. I had a general understanding of the use of the white shines and the sort of two-tone gradient and how size and shape and placement and small touches done to the pupil can completely change a character's expression, but I've never been able to make my eyes very INTERESTING, at least not in the same way. Anyway, I was messing around with Paint Tool Sai the other day and I just really, really liked how these eyes came out. I want to start doing my eyes more like this if I can more consistently replicate the effect. You might notice that even in this drawing, the right eye is quite a bit different from the left just because I wasn't even sure EXACTLY what I did to create the first one.

... But you know what, it looks pretty good. And the shading isn't bad either! Among the myriad things I still need to practice and improve upon, I am going to allow myself to feel proud of this.

The full image will likely be used on the lore page of the main site for Kiva.