On Beady Eyes: A Discovery (And some babbling)

From left to right, Leonard Nemoy, Chris Urbanowicz and Clancy Brown. Beady eyes, bug eyes and sunken bug eyes with a low brow variation. Nemoy and Brown are in crazy character makeup. Chris just naturally looks like this.

Have you ever looked at Leonard Nemoy's eyes? They're insane! I didn't know that eyes like his were possible!

See, in my world, there have always been three basic kinds of eyes. Bug eyes, squint eyes and almond eyes. These are just beyond me.

I've been fascinated by bug eyes in particular for a while now. B and C are both examples of really lovely bug eyes. Bugginess happens for a variety of reasons, but the result is basically the same in the end.
You can tell eyes are buggy because more of the whites show, and the the ball shapes the eyelids. And the eyes will probably look like they're kind of popping out of they're head. I highly suggest drawing bug eyes for would be portrait artists. They will drive you up the wall and into the woods, but after that, they'll force you to shade and visualize 3d forms. You can see the curve of the face clearly with bug eyes, because they stick out. Also they're adorable.

B, Chris Urbanowicz of the band "Editors". He's a near perfect example of bug-eyes that look like they're popping out of the skull. (I only know one other person with better ones, but I don't have a picture, nor permission to use it.) I think it's fairly clear why this happens, now that I can see his head next to these two other lovelies. Basically, my theory is that his head is just friggen tiny, so there's just not room in his little roundy head for his eyeballs. Eyeballs are more or less the same size on any one. He's looking down a little, so that makes it look a little smaller too. But still. Brown looks like he could eat him for lunch.

Then again, Clancy Brown has a Huge head. It's not by chance that he was repeatedly cast as monsters and villains in the 80s. So why does he have bug eyes? (Note, he's got some eye make up on that's playing up the shape of his eyes. It's hard to find good refs of this guy. Rest assured, they really are buggy.) My theory is this, his head is big, and therefor, so are his eye sockets. The "orbital fat pad"-- that's the padding in the eye socket around the eyeball-- isn't thick enough, so the area surrounding the eye sinks in. This reveals more of the eyeball. So the end result is the same.

The moral of this story is that Leonard Nemoy has like... reverse bug eyes! Look at how much white is showing compared to these other guys! Chris shows more white on one eye, than Nemoy has on both eyes combined. And there is so little sign of the eyeball on the underlid. Look how flat that is. You see that on squint eyes, but squint eyes only look smaller because the upper-upper eyelid--the part between the upper lid and the brows-- covers the outer sides of the eyes. Like Brown's in a way. But his do that because his brow is really low, they're not real squint eyes.

Anyway! The way of the beady eyes has been revealed to me and I am intrigued! I can't figure out why an eye would arrange itself that way. Not yet...

A Discovery: The notation of the orbit.

After the first sketch of the general shape of the head, the orbits (fig 1) and dark areas inside are the first thing I mark (fig 2).So I was scribbling around the other day and I happened to finish off the shading in the orbit with a little line down the side where the nose was going to be. And I liked it. That's pretty much the sum of the discovery. (fig 3) That if I make this little line to mark the side of the nose I have a lot easier time seeing where the eyes are supposed to go in the grand scheme of things. See, I have this problem, I repeatedly make my eyes too small, too far apart, and crazy crooked. I think keeping better track of the nose, and the relationship of the eye to it, will help.


Keeping proportions straight is just a matter of constantly checking on how each piece of face relates to another. I say 'just' like it's a simple thing. It's like rubbing your tummy, scratching your head and riding your bike with your pants down at your ankles (no, I'm not illustrating that). It's not just eye to nose, it's the pieces of face in between the parts we usually think about that really... connect everything. The spaces between the features are as much, or more important than the features themselves.

(Fig 4) This particular line reminds me of the relationship between the bridge of the nose (A), the eye/bridge valley where glasses rest (B), the connection of the upper-upper eyelid to the bridge of the nose (C), the nose edge of the third eyebag (D, you won't see this clearly on everybody), and the lump of the tear duct (E, something I often forget, I only just realized what I was looking at in this picture as I mapped it out again for this. Ridiculous. Thank god I figured that out, I was so confused what that lighter patch was doing).

It's all ratios and itty-bitty invisible lines with me. They say not to sweat the small stuff. But the big stuff terrifies me more anyway. I figure, if I get enough small stuff right, it'll add up to some good big stuff too. That's totally a fallacy, but it's only slightly worse than most sayings.

Today I've also been thinking about lips. (Fig 5, yes, that's the same picture.) Mostly I've been thinking that they're insane and I don't get why there would be a weird little ridge-y dip thing at the junction of the lip and face skin. What. The. Hell. I think I've almost got it, just let me sleep on it.