Using eyelashes to change the atmosphere of your character

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The eyes are one of the parts of character illustration that we want to take most care with, because as people say, the eyes are the windows to the soul!

Not only is the eye shape and iris style important, we need to think about how we place the eyelashes, and how many we use on a character’s eye. This can really change a character’s image, and how the audience perceives them!

Using the examples below, let’s see what eyelashes can tell us about a character.

No lashes

This will give the eyes a natural, bright appearance, so we often see this style of eye used on children and characters with “innocent” personalities.

A few upper lashes

This style is used on both female characters and male characters with a more androgynous appearance. It gives our character a cute look!

Lots of upper lashes

Lots of eyelashes will make an eye look more open, so the eyes can look larger, even if the actual eye and iris size is the same.

Only lower lashes

Adding in lower lashes to a character with no upper lashes will draw the eye down, and make the shape look droopier. This makes the style good for kind, gentle characters.

Upper and lower lashes

When we see both upper and lower eyelashes, it gives a girls appearance. The character might look like they’re wearing makeup!

Lots of upper and lower lashes

This look really opens the eyes, and give a doll-like effect. It will look like the character has makeup on, so you might want to pair lashes like these with a glossier look on the lips too.

So what did you think of this mini-lesson on eyelashes? Did you notice a big difference between all the eyes?? It’s pretty cool how we can change the whole atmosphere of a character using just the lashes!

We hope you have fun trying out all different styles of lashes on your characters!

We go in to much more detail about how to draw eyes in our online course at Anime Art Academy, so if you want to learn more we suggest checking it out!

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