How to Paint Watercolor Eyes

These are eyes on larger paintings.
They are painted with  a technique learned from Paul McCormack.

Using a TINY brush,

wet the entire eye except the highlight.

Drop grey into the white of the eye and bleed it up to iris.

Drop in iris color, let it spread over the pupil and work it out to the edges of the iris as it dries. The iris is soft edged, not a cutout ball. Drop in ivory black for soft edged pupil.

Next, put the iris color plus black where the upper lid shadows the iris and drag this color around the outside of the iris.

Place a warm dark red to the upper lid line down to the tear duct.

Put mostly cad red to the tear duct keeping away from the highlight and 

bleed it into the white of the eye.

This second eye is not quite finished. This eye belongs to a child, so there will not be lower lid mascara but the upper lashes will be defined, a little more green shadowing will be added and the flesh tone deepened.

It takes a great deal of time to paint a watercolor painting when it is done in transparent layers. Paul McCormack said that a head and neck study takes him 80 hours. I am into these little eyes, which are a small part of the completed painting, over 90 minutes each eye and that is for the incomplete one....