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How to Paint Eyes That Feel Alive Without Overworking Them - the Atelier Newsletter
Published 29 days ago • 3 min read
Happy New Year everybody, I wish you all all the joy, love and inspiration for 2026! Let's start the year with a wonderful painting named : a Rose.
This wonderful portrait by Thomas Anshutz will teach us a crucial lesson about how to paint eyes:
Why the Eye Fails When You Try Too Hard
"A Rose" by Thomas Anshutz, 1905 (detail) oil on canvas
The eye is the most important feature in a portrait. It is where viewers look first, and where they look longest. That is precisely why it is so often overworked.
Many painters believe realism comes from sharp lines, eyelashes, and tiny highlights. The result is usually the opposite. An eye packed with detail often looks stiff, artificial, and disconnected from the rest of the face.
The solution is not more anatomy, but better understanding of form, placement, and expression. Thomas Anshutz’s portrait titled “A Rose” (1907) is a perfect example of how little detail is actually needed when those fundamentals are right.
1. Not Any Eye, Someone’s Eye
Before you paint an eye, you must understand whose eye it is.
This portrait depicts Rebecca Whelen, the daughter of a trustee of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where Anshutz taught for over thirty years. The subject fits a familiar theme of the late nineteenth century: an upper-class woman at leisure, often paired with a flower as a symbol of refinement or fragility. But Anshutz avoids turning her into a generic type.
Look closely at the eye. It is not an academic archetype, it’s someone’s actual eye. The lid has a specific heaviness. The angle is slightly tilted. The opening is neither wide nor symmetrical. These are the traits that make the eye belong to this person and no one else.
Notice how little sharp detail is used. There are no hard outlines around the iris. The lashes are barely indicated. What matters is the accuracy of the shape and the subtle asymmetry. If you get the shape right, the eye reads as real even with minimal information.
When painting, ask yourself this question before adding detail: does this shape feel specific to this person? If not, no amount of refinement will save it.
2. Position the Eye Properly
No amount of beautiful painting can fix a badly placed eye.
The position of the eye controls likeness. Its angle, distance from the nose, relationship to the brow, and alignment with the other features must be correct early on. Even a shift of a few millimeters can change the entire expression.
With the Bargue plate above, we can study how the angle changes the appearance of the eye.
In “A Rose”, the eye sits perfectly within the structure of the head. It follows the turn of the skull and aligns with the cheekbone and brow ridge. The eye does not float. It feels embedded in the face.
If you realize the placement is off, correct it immediately. One effective technique is to overlap the nex eye with the old, misplaced one and restate it as a simple shape, little by little. Very often, you can simply shift the position one or two millimeters to improve it. Redraw the eye using only value masses: the shadow of the socket, the plane of the lid, the light catching the eyeball. Once the position is right, clarity will return naturally. This is another reason why you want to ignore details: imagine that you do all the intricate work of detailing and then realize you need to change the entire position of the eye, it would just be time wasted.
Always prioritize placement over refinement. A well-placed simple eye will always look more convincing than a detailed eye in the wrong spot.
3. The Expression of the Eye Is the Expression of the Face
An eye does not express emotion on its own.
Expression emerges from the relationship between the eye, the eyebrow, the mouth, and even the posture of the body. In Anshutz’s portrait, the eye works because everything around it supports the same idea. The raised arm, the tilt of the head, the slight tension in the mouth all contribute to the mood.
"A Rose" 1905 by Thomas Anshutz
The eye is the final note, not the solo instrument.
If you isolate the eye and try to force expression into it alone, it will look exaggerated or artificial. Instead, build the expression across the entire face first. Let the eye remain calm and understated. When the surrounding forms are correct, the eye suddenly comes alive with very little effort.
Think of the eye as a mirror. It reflects the expression that already exists in the face. Your job is to set up that expression before you ever sharpen a highlight.
Thomas Anshutz shows us that realism is not about detail. It is about accuracy, placement, and unity.
If you focus on painting someone’s eye instead of an eye, place it correctly within the structure of the head, and let the expression emerge from the whole face, the eye will feel alive without being overworked.
The less you force it, the more convincing it becomes.
Free Art Newsletter filled with the best oil painting and drawing tips, directly from the Atelier tradition. Timeless techniques to enjoy weekly to grow and inspire.
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