Select the Rectangle tool again and draw a rectangle on the nearest surface, in a position that approximates where a human eye would go:

Select the Push/Pull tool again and hover the cursor over the "eye" area: (this snapshot shows the wrong cursor, sorry 'bout that):

Move the Push/Pull cursor slightly up/slightly to the right so the eye area is pushed inward about 1/4".

Check out the distance indicator in the lower right corner, which tells you how far you've pushed or pulled a surface: Note that even if you get the distance wrong because of a slip of the finger or whatever, you can immediately enter 1/4" and SketchUp will adjust the distance to this value.

Use the Paint Bucket tool to select color white, and apply this to the indented eye socket:

That's the "eye socket" done, now we're gonna make an eye!

Select the Circle tool:

Draw a circle on the surface just under the eye area:

With Circle, it's just a case of clicking anywhere to define the center, then moving the mouse pointer outward so the radius increases, then select on the face when it's the desired size.

There's a reason why I didn't draw the circle directly onto the white socket area -- SketchUp would have seen a geometry overlap with the eye rectangle and split the circle, but that's not what I want, so I'm drawing the circle on a clear area and will move it once I'm finished, as you'll see.

Use the Push/Pull tool to pull the circle outward into a prism:

The distance you're pulling the surface outward will display in the lower right corner, you can judge it from this, 1/8" is ideal: Note that even if you get the distance wrong because of a slip of the finger or whatever, you can immediately enter 1/8" and SketchUp will adjust the distance to this value.

Select the Offset tool and select the rim of the circle:

Drag the circle inward to form an inner circle:

...and left-mouse-click to fix the inner circle position on the face.

Select the Circle tool again, select a point on the inner circle, and drag outward slightly so a new, smaller circle forms. (Note, you can follow the arc of the inner circle with the mouse pointer, which gives you better control when defining a small radius.)

When you let go the mouse button, the circle is drawn. Note that, with all operations, if things don't turn out right you can just hit Ctrl-Z to undo, and try again.

Select the Eraser tool and erase the line in the middle of the small circle:

Use the Paint Bucket tool to make the pupil black and the highlight spot white:

Choose a color for the eye, and select the "iris" surfaces to apply the color:

Now we're going to collect the eye elements together into a group which can be moved or copied without interfering with surrounding elements!

Hold down the Ctrl key and select the elements that make up the eye, e.g. the iris front and rim, the white light spot, the black pupil:

Note: holding down the Ctrl key while selecting allows you to select multiple elements. While doing this, if you happen to select a wrong element, you can either start over, or you can hold down the Shift key and re-select the "wrong" element to de-select it. The other selected elements will still be selected (highlighted). So you hold down Ctrl to select multiple elements, and you hold down Shift to de-select an already-selected element.

Right-click once on any of the highlighted elements, and from the pop-up menu, Select > Bounding Edges:

Again, right-click once on any of the highlighted elements, and from the pop-up menu, select Make Group:

And the group containing all the eye elements should be created:

Next step: move the eye up into the eye socket!

Select the Move/Copy tool and select the inner edge line of the eye, where it touches the face:

Tap the Ctrl key once. The cursor should change so a "+" is visible, signifying that SketchUp's copy function is switched on.

Drag the eye up into the eye socket,

...and click on the white surface, to fix it there.

Now select the original eye:

...and hit the Delete button to delete it -- don't need it any more, we'll work with the copy that's in the eye socket.

There's a reason I copied the eye rather than tried to move the original eye. For some reason, when SketchUp creates a group, this sometimes stays locked on one axis and only slides along that axis. By making a copy of the eye, which I'll now work with, I skipped past this problem. Sounds odd, but that's the best explanation I've got! Maybe it's just my version of Windows, maybe it's SketchUp, I dunno.

Sanity Check -- So Far So Good

At this point you might be thinking, "All that, just to make an eye??" Well yeah, but this is a 3D model, you can use this eye over and over in multiple character groups, it's a baseline component. Do it once, use it a thousand times!

SAVE THE MODEL.

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Next step: Eyebrows

Intro | Heads | Eyes | Eyebrows | Copying Eyes & Eyebrows | Noses | Mouths | Hair & Ears