Draw eyeglasses in Aquarell: align frames, bridge and temples

Glasses are easily reduced to two circles and two lines, but their frames are bridged and their temples turn into different depths. Draw a fictional partly folded pair through restrained rigid forms and transparency cues. Establish the frame without lens reflections first; optical effects cannot automatically repair weak construction.

Establish the shared frame plane

Use an approximately 1800×1300 px landscape canvas with the front turned slightly right. Make the near frame broader and compress the far frame in perspective. Start with two empty rounded outlines whose axes relate and whose centres follow the same front-plane direction. Separate background, frame, temples and lenses. Before glass or shadows, check that the pair belongs to one object at small size. Correct an overly high frame through the bridge and common plane rather than darker lens colour. Frames may differ from perfect circles, but their shared space must stay stable.

Preserve frame width between contours

Give each frame inner and outer contours, clearer nearby and appropriately narrowed farther away. Do not displace the inner opening so far that the opposite band appears broken. Fill the band in one colour and check width before highlights. Narrow tyre-like frames and reduce black area. If a thin wire was unintended, add actual surface width rather than merely thickening one outline. A slightly thicker nose side is possible, but both frames need one design rule. Asymmetry should reflect perspective and design, not an omitted part.

Connect both frames through the bridge

Connect a short curved or boxed bridge to both frames’ upper inner sides with proportionate width. It is not a decorative line floating between them: both endpoints must meet their frames. Hide one frame to inspect the origin, then restore it to inspect the other end. Nose pads may be simplified as a small near plane and a far dark cue. Open an unintended third enclosed frame shape, or clarify bridge thickness and attachment when the frames seem independent. A large shadow cannot replace actual connection.

Locate hinges before temple lengths

Temples begin at outer upper hinges and extend backward; one may be open while the far one is partly folded. Establish a short attachment and bend before length, rather than letting a temple originate in the lens centre. Taper its width and curve the end modestly. Interrupt hidden parts if it seems to pierce a frame. Diagnose a far temple crowding the image through its bend before arbitrarily shortening material proportions. A simplified folded state still needs a continuously traceable origin, turn and endpoint.

Give temples a narrow surface

Use slightly different values for a temple’s top and side planes, with a narrow near light and a simpler distant section. Identical black lines everywhere make folding difficult to read. Test width and overlap in flat colour before material detail. Reduce cylindrical highlights on a pipe-like temple and restore a flatter strip. Clarify hinge and bend in a rope-like one. Frame and temples are connected rigid structures, so unnecessary fibres or cloth wrinkles would introduce the wrong softness.

Retain the background through lenses

Keep most lens centres near the background colour, adding only a pale cool-grey change near selected edges. A broad background band should remain identifiable through a lens; this study does not calculate real optical power. Avoid solid dark-blue discs, but do not remove every surface cue either. The frame should be complete with lenses hidden. Restored lenses add only selected glass information. Reduce saturation and reflection area when they dominate the frame, concentrating transparency cues in a few useful places.

Turn reflections with each lens plane

Give the near lens a curved pale reflection and the far lens a shorter, narrower one. They share an environment but are not identical copies. Reserve a small brightest area and preserve bridge and inner edges. Stop reflections inside the frame instead of running a white rope across its band. Reduce opaque patches if it resembles a mirror. If it looks like glass-free frames, add only two pale near-edge cues. Judge the material normally; most surface detail may be omitted without losing clarity.

Identify actual tabletop contacts

Here the lower near-frame edge and one temple tip touch the table. Give those contacts concentrated darks and make other cast shadows broader and paler. A raised far temple should not also have an equally black ground-contact edge. Repair floating through contacts and shadow origins, or reduce an overly broad shadow and restore temple depth if flattened. Review the paired silhouette small, folding normally and erroneous crossings close up. Shadows explain height rather than excuse an impossible hinge; establish coherent paths first.

Check gaps with the glass hidden

Hide lenses and highlights and inspect background shapes inside both frames, beneath the bridge and between temples. No gap should accidentally fuse shut. Correct its particular edge before moving the whole pair, then restore lenses to check reflections do not swallow it again. A grey structural copy beside the colour finish separates spatial problems from colour problems. The frames need not be identically wide: perspective compression suits this view better than mechanical symmetry, while both retain one design identity.

Keep the frame design and vary temple folding

Keep lens-free and folded-structure versions plus a PNG, with near/far temples independently editable. Next, fully open only the far temple, rebuilding its post-hinge direction, visible width and contacts while frames and light stay fixed. Rotating an old line is insufficient because width and occlusion change too. Check the exported bridge and reflections inside the frames at use size; remove nonessential lights if needed. Record the negative space that best explains folding and construct it before glass effects next time.

Related tutorials and sources

Transparency and background, Joints and rigid surfaces.

Checked on November 4, 2026 against the official Aquarell listing and Apple’s version lookup: version 1.0.7, requiring iOS / iPadOS 15.0 or later. This manual drawing workflow uses public brush, colour, layer and saving capabilities. Dimensions, shapes and palettes are study suggestions; check controls in the installed version. Keep native projects for editing and PNGs for previews. No step-by-step physical-device testing is claimed.