I have long been an artist addicted to large, luminous eyes. I have long been accused of drawing too much like I am a Japanese anime or manga artist. Point taken. I was first inspired to draw characters like the ones in Astroboy which I was addicted to in the 1960s.
I know the big eyes can be overdone. They make a character like Big-eyed Benny above look positively alien. E.T. phone home style of stuff. But they can also be extra expressive. And many child faces do indeed have eyes that are more like a doe deer than a human. These lend a vulnerable quality of open-faced cuteness, an endearing quality that activates parental instincts.
And, some of these drawings that I do, portraits made from faces in the Walmart catalog or from Instagram, are actually started with a tracing layer laid atop the photograph. Here the eyes may have been exaggerated a little because I can’t help myself, but they are basically the same as the subject of the portrait. This girl does goofy comedy and dances on Instagram and has a really infectious grin that I can’t even begin to draw accurately.
But the result of this big-eyed obsession of mine all comes down to the fact that I have been retired from teaching now for an entire decade. I retired in 2014. And I miss working with kids. So much it hurts. Maybe I can’t make them laugh and learn anything anymore. But I can remember them as an artist. Drawing comes more from the heart than it does from the pen anyway.
Catch a Falling Star 