How to Draw Tears That Are Real Looking

Inside: How to draw tears that look realistic.

Hey there Artists! Today, we are going to practice drawing Tears.

This is an exercise, which means practice. Tears (in drawing) rarely just happen.

Tears signify strong emotion, and that is usually crying with sadness and/or anger.

When someone is crying their face, especially the eye area, changes so our drawing needs to showcase that firstly.

Supplies you will need to draw tears on a face

Supplies:

Artist tip: As with any drawing it’s important to recognize how much space you are working with.

To do this, point to the middle of your paper with your finger or pencil.

This will tell your eyes how much space you have to draw in. It does not have to be exact!

Let’s get started:

1. Since we are working on tears, I will only sketch the eye and not go into much detail.

If you already have the eye shape, start from there.

2. Ok, I had to add more detail. HA!

Also, here we are going to add a wavy line above the water line in the eye.

Tears build up before they ever leave the eye area and this is a big part of learning how to draw realistic tears on a face.

3. Add a tear streaming out of the eye, these will be gently wavy lines coming down from the inner eye area.

4. I’ve added a little teardrop down the face.

5. Also, when someone cries the cheek pushes up towards the eye, this can flatten or even bend upward the lower eye area.

You could even lower the top of the eye near the inside, like a squint if you’d like.

Crying also shows the lines near our eyes more. Accentuate the line of the lid and lines beneath the eye.

The best part: COLOR!

Eyes can be many different colors and they tend to lighten when people are crying.

Tears add more reflection to the eye and while tears themselves are clear, as the artist I’ve made them blue to draw attention to them.

There you go! You’ve done it and drawn tears that look pretty realistic for your next face project.

I shouldn’t be so happy because our eyes are sad, but I’m just proud of you. : )

Let’s see what else we can draw together? Maybe the face this eye is living on or a bouquet of wildflowers to cheer it up?