How to Draw a Eyebrow with this how-to video and step-by-step drawing instructions. Pencil drawing tutorials for beginners and All.
Please see the drawing tutorial in the video below
You can refer to the simple step-by-step drawing guide below
Decide on Eyebrow Height
We must first figure out where to draw the eyebrow above our eye. I’ll place mine close to the eye but feel free to play around with the height to see what you prefer. With men, I like to pull the eyebrow closer to the eye.
Outline the Eyebrow
Once you’ve decided on the eyebrow height, let’s create a few rough guidelines to help us construct the eyebrow outline. These don’t need to be exact.
Navigate just outside the left eye, move your pen straight up and draw a very light line to mark the spot. This is roughly where your eyebrow begins. Navigate to the right corner of the eye, go straight up and add a slight tick. This will be the point where the eyebrow arches. Angle outward from the right corner of your eye to the end of your eyebrow.
You can create a number of shapes using the guidelines we just drew to help you out. I’m going with something fairly angular, not too curvy, to make the eye look more masculine
Instead of drawing a solid outline, use tiny pencil strokes that flow in the same direction our eyebrow hairs are pointing. This way they blend in and just disappear as we continue drawing. Use small, light strokes. Don’t worry too much about how they look, we mostly want to focus on the eyebrow shape we’re going to make. Adjust the shape as you like before moving on to the next step.
Understanding Eyebrow Hair Direction
To simplify the rest of the eyebrow drawing process, I’m dividing the eyebrow into two zones. Let’s call the bottom half zone 1 and the top half, zone 2.
In Zone 1, the hair mostly points up and towards the end of the eyebrow. At the beginning of the eyebrow, they can even point in the opposite direction. Zone 2 is simple, they mostly point down towards the end of the eyebrow. In the middle section (between the two zones) they point to the end of the eyebrow while following the same path as the boundary line.
You can draw a boundary line between zones 1 and 2 by starting with hair-like strokes from top left to bottom right. Because every eyebrow is different
Search google for some eyebrow images and you might find a distinct line running through the eyebrow and separating it into two zones, like example A which I find fairly common, like example B where zone 1 is the most prominent, or even one like Example C where Zone 2 is most prominent.
ZONE 1: Draw the Bottom Half of the Eyebrow
To keep the eyebrow looking as natural as possible, make sure not to draw the hairs in a perfectly straight path, but to stagger them to create a more random pattern.
Another thing to remember is to not draw them all straight and parallel to each other and instead change the angle or curve slightly. The example above is a bit exaggerated.
The last thing on your mind is to keep your pencil sharp at all times to make sure every hair is thin. Swipe your pen up at the end of each stroke to feather it.
Let’s start drawing the hair in Zone 1 and create a row at the very bottom. If you make a mistake, simply squeeze your kneaded eraser to a fine point and gently dab the mistake away.
Keep doing this until you reach the boundary line. As you get closer to the boundary line, you should start angling or curving your hair until it’s pointing in the same direction as the hair we drew along the Zone 1 and 2 boundary. Draw more or less hair depending on how full or sparse you want your eyebrow to appear. Fill in any areas that look too bare. Try to avoid drawing unruly hair for now, as we’ll mix up our drawing a bit later.
ZONE 2: Draw the Top Half of the Eyebrow
Now that you have some experience drawing the bottom hair, it will be easier to draw the top ones.
Again, instead of drawing them parallel to each other, you can cross some hair over each other to make it look natural.
So for Zone 2 we’ll draw the first row of hair very lightly with very thin strokes.
Along the borderline between our two eyebrow zones, I want the hairs to look like they’re affecting each other, like they’re interacting with each other. I can do this by tapering off some of the top and bottom hair like example G. You can also draw them like example H where they cross each other, but I think too much of this can create a very unnatural looking crisscross pattern as shown in example I. So it’s up to you and your creative choice and how you want to proceed.
Experiment with tapered or criss-crossed hair to see what you prefer. If your brow looks too patterned or stiff, make sure your strokes are slightly curved and relaxed instead of straight and stiff, and remember to flick your pencil up at the end of each stroke.
Blend Your Eyebrow
Next, I’m going to slightly blend the eyebrow to make it look fuller and give it some shadow. If you are unsure about this step, you can test it on a separate sheet of paper before applying it to your drawing and do it as lightly as possible. If you’re still not sure, you can instead just lightly shade your eyebrow, making sure the edges are the lightest and that the smoothness of your shading matches the rest of your drawing.
For blending, I simply use a normal, soft facial tissue that I wrap around my finger. Try to avoid the outer edges of your eyebrow and any stray hairs you’ve drawn. Very gently smudge your eyebrow, following the direction of the hairs, with a quick motion, lifting your finger at the end of each smudge. The lighter you press, the less you’ll smudge and vice versa, so do what feels comfortable to you. If you have to do it a few times to blend the entire eyebrow, use a clean area on the cloth each time.
Here’s a before and after so you can see how much I mixed up on mine. You absolutely don’t need to mix yours that much! It doesn’t look nice at the moment and it shouldn’t because we’ll be working more on the drawing. The spots act like drop shadows and make the eyebrow look bushier without having to draw an overwhelming amount of hair. For now, let’s take a break from the main part of our eyebrow and finally draw some stray hairs. The reason I’m drawing the stray hairs now is because I want these pencil strokes to appear as sharp/clean as possible.
Draw Stray Eyebrow Hair
You can skip this section if you want your eyebrow to look well-groomed and plucked.
You can skip this section if you want your eyebrows to look groomed and plucked.
I just widen the eyebrow in a very subtle way and draw very light hairs that are shorter than the others we’ve drawn so far. I like to draw them even lighter the further away they are from the main part of the eyebrow. Try to spread them out so they aren’t too close together. Make your pencil lines extra thin at the top of your eyebrow. Add more stray hair if you want your eyebrow drawing to look bushy. By now you can probably tell that I’ve extended my eyebrow beyond the original outline I created, and that’s totally fine. Because it was meant to be a rough outline – something to help us in the early stages of drawing. So don’t feel like you have to strictly stick to this original shape!
Darken and Sharpen Your Eyebrow Drawing
If you think your eyebrow lacks that 3D feeling, you can darken hairs that face away from the light.
My imaginary light source is coming from above, so the lightest hairs are the ones on top (zone 2) because those hairs face the light more directly, while the hairs on the bottom (zone 1) face away from the light, making them appear darker. So simply darkening the hair along the shadowed side of your eyebrow can make it look more 3D. Okay, earlier we smudged our eyebrow with a tissue to create shadows and make it look more filled in. This process has made them a little blurry. We want to give it some definition back. In other words, I’m redrawing some of the hair to make it appear clearer and sharper.
You don’t have to redraw every hair, just select a few and try not to favor one section of the eyebrow over another. I just redraw each other or something and allow the others to act as fillers. Try to keep your pen very sharp throughout the process. If you currently like your eyebrow hair color/shade, just focus on making the hair look sharper, but if you’re like me and want to darken your eyebrow more to bring out the drawing, you can go ahead and darken it at at the same time, press harder with your pen as you draw each stroke. As I do this I do some touch ups like lengthening out some hairs or even adding some new ones where there seems to be an odd gap. Just do what you think looks good for your specific drawing. Keep stepping back from your drawing as you do this to make sure you like how it’s progressing. If you need to remove some hairs, instead of rubbing out an entire area of your drawing, squeeze your kneaded eraser into a fine point and gently pat the hairs away.
