The Iris And The Lid (from the series Ciana's Notes on Portraiture)

Forget every "makeup for you eye shape" article you've ever read.

There is time to explore eye shape in portraiture, but this post isn't it. Nor their size, nor the form of the lids, nor any mystical woo about souls. This post is only about where the lids intersect with the iris and pupil, and how that effects expression. As a portrait artist you should pay extra attention to this detail, because the human brain pays a disproportionate amount of attention to eyes, thus any little mistake is noticeable immediately.

As we emote and our eyeballs roll hither and thither, and as we scrunch our faces in speech and emotion, naturally the lids move over the iris and will intersect at different points. That's why a smile is associated with a squished up, crinkled lower lid that sits high on the eyeball. To smile with the bottom of the iris exposed, meanwhile, is very unsettling.

Bill Skarsgård smiling normally, left, and as Pennywise from It, smiling with exposed bottom iris, right.

But faces are all different of course, and distinctive in the point at which the lids intersect the iris while looking straight ahead in a neutral expression. It can create an important "aura" to a person. The neutral form can unwittingly imitate certain expressions in the general population, thereby creating iciness, naiveté, peacefulness, or a number of other first glance impressions.

Looking straight ahead, most people's upper eyelid covers just the top of the iris, and most people's bottom lid skirts the bottom edge of the iris, covering it slightly. Here are some average lid-iris intersections:

LeVar Burton (Reading Rainbow, Star Trek), with top and bottom eyelids intersecting the iris in an average spot.

Tao Tsuchiya (Japanese actress) with average iris-lid intersection

Emma Watson, with average iris-lid intersection.

Lids that reveal most or all of the iris can create an innocent, vulnerable, and intense look.

Zooey Deschanel in Almost Famous, with her irises almost totally exposed by her lids.

Aziz Ansari, whose lids expose most of his iris.

Karla Mosley (actress, The Bold and The Beautiful), whose lids expose most of her irises even while smiling.

Elijah Wood, whose lids expose most of his iris.

An upper lid that intersects low, near or at the pupil, especially while the lower lid reveals the bottom edge of the iris, can create a peaceful look, sometimes also a soulfully wry expression. Emily Blunt has it, and a critic once called her face "incapable of registering a banal expression."

Emily Blunt, whose upper lid intersects low, near her pupil.

Natasha Lyonne, whose upper lid intersects low, near her pupil.

Samuel L. Jackson, whose upper lid intersects low, near his pupil, and lower lid exposes his iris.

Devon Aoki, whose upper lid intersects near her pupil.

Waris Ahluwalia, whose upper lids intersect near his pupils.

Maggie Smith, whose upper lid intersected near her pupil even in her youth.

Daniel Kaluuya, whose upper lids intersect near his pupils and whose lower lids reveal the bottom of his irises.

Buster Keaton, whose upper lids intersect near his pupils and whose lower lids reveal the bottom of his irises.

Condola Rashad, whose upper lids intersect near her pupils and whose lower lids reveal the bottom of her irises.

Mila Kunis, whose upper lids intersect near her pupils.

 
A bottom lid that intersects high up on the iris seems to lend to an icier look, more hard-edged, distant and mature, even otherworldly.

Lucy Liu, whose lower lid intersects high on her iris.

Benedict Cumberbatch, whose lower lid intersects high on his iris, AND whose top lid intersects low near his pupil.

Gal Godot, whose bottom lid intersects high on her iris.

Tyra Banks, whose lower lids intersect high on her irises.

All of these people, of course, can vary their lid-iris intersection with their expression. Zooey Deschanel can squint, and Natasha Lyonne can raise her top lids in bug-eyed surprise. It doesn't show 100% of the time-- just more often than average, when their gaze is neutral. If you notice your subject has a distinctive lid-iris intersection, consider posing them so it shows. If you posed Clint Eastwood, for example, whose lower lid intersects high on his iris, looking up at the viewer with relaxed lids, you would lose that distinctive "squint" that makes him instantly recognizable. It would, however, be an interesting and unusual take on portraying him.  There is no right or wrong, just the discretion of the artist. One must always weigh the value of "capturing someone's essence," making them instantly recognizable, against the possibility of a portrait becoming a caricature.

Clint Eastwood, posed in an unusual manner so his characteristic bottom-lid squint doesn't show.

Clint Eastwood, in character and so Clint-Eastwood-y as to be a caricature of himself.

What about the rest of the face? Stay tuned for the rest of my Notes on Portraiture series. So far, Don't Forget The Spine, Neck and Shoulders, and How To Paint An Eyebrow.