Eye Tutorial - Dry Brush Technique [original art]

Hey guys, back with a second eye tutorial. The first eye tutorial was done only using graphite, this one uses the "dry brush" technique which I have briefly described in some of my other posts. There are pros and cons to each medium; with graphite it is easier to be more precise for smaller details and with dry brush you can cover areas faster and get a darker value because of the oil paint being used, but it struggles sometimes to do details. 

This is what the finished eyes look like:

 First I lay down the rough sketch:

 Refine the sketch a bit:

Start with some of the darkest areas:

Keep highlights clean and white:

Other dark areas:

Now I take a clean brush (at least, not adding any extra oil) and I brush outward from the paint I just put down to create the shadowed gradient:

 In my opinion, the key to getting good depth and a sort of "randomness" to the texture inside the eye is to layer stuff in there. I'll go through multiple layers of charcoal and then picking it up randomly with my kneaded eraser. Just keep repeating until you get the look you want. 

Darken the values:

Add some shadows onto the whites of the eyes:

If you'd like to see more process pics feel free to follow me @allstarrunner!