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I have watched

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7O_Fqg7maKU

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIzxQP2XxlY

but the best I can do after 3-4 tries is this and I have to use a toothpick. The eyes are not flat in these dang models there is a stupid bump that gets in the way of the brush.

As eyes are in recesses, it can actually be easier to paint them before you paint the face, then paint the face around them.

I find it a lot easier to paint an eye and then tidy it into the correct shape using the base colour than I would to paint an eye on perfectly after I had done the rest of the face, but that depends on the figures.

For humans and models that have tiny eyes in recesses, definitely try out painting them first, tidying them using the base coat to get the shape you want, and then carefully painting around them.

For models that have much bigger eyes that are much easier to reach with a brush, it works out better to paint them later.

I agree completely, paint the eyes before you paint the rest of the face, that way you can paint around them but also correct any mistakes without ruining your painting.

I also find that as I am right handed it is easier to turn the model upside down when painting the models right eye (your left) so that the model's nose doesn't get in the way.

And finally keep you paint thin so you have more control over where it goes.

Don't use a toothpick. Use a brush with a good point, relatively thin paint and zen patience. You generally shouldn't need anything under a 0, unless you're trying to do irises and dot highlights on the eye over them.

winterdyne wrote:Don't use a toothpick. Use a brush with a good point, relatively thin paint and zen patience. You generally shouldn't need anything under a 0, unless you're trying to do irises and dot highlights on the eye over them.

I have the smallest size army painter brand brush. I hardly use it because when I do I get results like the 3rd picture of the guy in the brown coat. He looks like he has been taking some magic mushrooms.

I paint the base color of the face
Then the white for the eye
Do the pupil more as a vertical slash, then a dot (It's easier for me)
Finally go back with the flesh color and make it all eye shaped.

Before the final step it looks like the mini failed a perils of the warp check and their face exploded. Not pretty. The hard part is making sure they aren't cross-eyed. I also only do eyes in the evening. After my morning coffee I have too many jitters to do fine work. Zen calm also helps. There have been times I wait on the rhythm of my pulse and dot the eye at just the right moment.

Back before I got decent brushes I used little twists of paper towels for fine detail work, rather then toothpicks. It gave me a decent point and held enough paint to get the job done. Just tear off a square inch or so and twist it up into a cone.

In general I hate eyes. Lots of finicky detail at a stupidly small scale. And if you don't do it right, it can totally sour the whole model. Helmets: They don't only prevent head trauma, they make painters happy.

Much like the above poster I do the base colour for the face, then the eye and touch up any slipups with the base colours again.

Most of the time the model will be too small to merit putting a pupil into the eye, it will either mess the eye up or end up with a near cross eyed looking miniatures when you're done. It can be enough just to paint the whites of the eyes and then leave it at that.

It will also depend on the figure if I will do the eyes or not or just leave them blank. Most SM plastics don't have eyes sculpted (they're just basically recesses), while Infinity figures show where the eyes should be. Don't use a toothpick: it's point is even bigger than a proper brush's point.

Nevelon wrote:I paint the base color of the face
Then the white for the eye
Do the pupil more as a vertical slash, then a dot (It's easier for me)
Finally go back with the flesh color and make it all eye shaped.

Before the final step it looks like the mini failed a perils of the warp check and their face exploded. Not pretty. The hard part is making sure they aren't cross-eyed. I also only do eyes in the evening. After my morning coffee I have too many jitters to do fine work. Zen calm also helps. There have been times I wait on the rhythm of my pulse and dot the eye at just the right moment.

Back before I got decent brushes I used little twists of paper towels for fine detail work, rather then toothpicks. It gave me a decent point and held enough paint to get the job done. Just tear off a square inch or so and twist it up into a cone.

In general I hate eyes. Lots of finicky detail at a stupidly small scale. And if you don't do it right, it can totally sour the whole model. Helmets: They don't only prevent head trauma, they make painters happy.

Yar. I have to put both my elbows on the table, plant 4 fingers on the mini to hold it in place, and I am still shaky. I wonder if there are screen on stickers or something...

Eyes always gave me grief too :(
I've got an airbrush now but haven't tryed this yet...
Has anyone made a pin hole stencil and sprayed the pupils? It might help a lot with keeping the size consistant for those with shakey hands?

I paint the eyes black.

I do Imperial Guard so the vast majority of models have small eyes under helmets so it works out. Ever hear the phrase "Don't shoot until you can see the whites of their eyes!"?

For Ogryn and other much models it can be an issue though.

Paint the eyes black then paint the corners of them with white. It looks something like this:


Also, it's eyes, not eye's. Apostrophes don't belong in plurals.

Generally follow this method - granted, some aspects of it are specifically for female eyes (hence the title "Betty Davis Eyes"). The general procedure is the same though for both men and women though.

http://www.reapermini.com/Thecraft/12

Although I prefer a brush - I know a few people who do the iris using a round marker. They find that it is easier to get the consistent shape with. Just make sure you know how it will react with wet paint (you don't want to have running mascara to deal with).

All this talk of markers, and so on annoys me. Generally it's laziness talking, rather than any physical inability to pick up the skill required.

Learn brush control people, you'll thank yourself for it.

As for eyes, there are a couple of rules to get em looking nice, First that you NEVER use pure black or pure white*. Second that you shouldn't have the iris centered. Always have it to one side; you'll find that this alleviates any crosseyedness that can happen.

Always use thin paints and good brush control. Better to do a couple of touches for an iris, couple of strokes for the eye than have a big blob of gloopy paint in the eye socket.

Usually I'll do the base colour and wash for the face, then paint the eye an ivory colour (very light flesh or tan). Then do the pupils** in a dark brown/grey (charadon granite sort of tone). If you're going to do white dot highlights to give them some shine, do the pupils large. Add a touch of fleshtone to this dark colour and put this across the upper eyelid.

*: The exception is for white-dotting highlights on the eye itself. This can look good either on a solid pupil or one with an iris.

**: If you're doing irises, do 3 colours; a dark iris colour (basic shape) a light iris colour (inside lower portion) and then the pupil itself (as this is a dot you can get away with black).

Now go back to the face, and using the base tone tidy up the eyelids, and go do the highlighting. Remember to glaze a little bluish tone under the eyes (I use a shadow grey / tallarn flesh mix) and jawline.

I do paint from all sorts of different angles; don't fall into the trap of trying to hold the piece upright all the time. I glue or ram stuff onto cocktail sticks as handles, some swear by blu-tack to wine corks. Whatever floats your boat really.

I get this sort of result:


Edit: Just noticed I haven't dot-highlighted his right eye, or it's not showing in the photo. :-)

winterdyne wrote:All this talk of markers, and so on annoys me. Generally it's laziness talking, rather than any physical inability to pick up the skill required.

Learn brush control people, you'll thank yourself for it.

As for eyes, there are a couple of rules to get em looking nice, First that you NEVER use pure black or pure white*. Second that you shouldn't have the iris centered. Always have it to one side; you'll find that this alleviates any crosseyedness that can happen.

Always use thin paints and good brush control. Better to do a couple of touches for an iris, couple of strokes for the eye than have a big blob of gloopy paint in the eye socket.

Usually I'll do the base colour and wash for the face, then paint the eye an ivory colour (very light flesh or tan). Then do the pupils** in a dark brown/grey (charadon granite sort of tone). If you're going to do white dot highlights to give them some shine, do the pupils large. Add a touch of fleshtone to this dark colour and put this across the upper eyelid.

*: The exception is for white-dotting highlights on the eye itself. This can look good either on a solid pupil or one with an iris.

**: If you're doing irises, do 3 colours; a dark iris colour (basic shape) a light iris colour (inside lower portion) and then the pupil itself (as this is a dot you can get away with black).

Now go back to the face, and using the base tone tidy up the eyelids, and go do the highlighting. Remember to glaze a little bluish tone under the eyes (I use a shadow grey / tallarn flesh mix) and jawline.

I do paint from all sorts of different angles; don't fall into the trap of trying to hold the piece upright all the time. I glue or ram stuff onto cocktail sticks as handles, some swear by blu-tack to wine corks. Whatever floats your boat really.

I get this sort of result:


Edit: Just noticed I haven't dot-highlighted his right eye, or it's not showing in the photo. :-)

In that photo did you actually cut grooves into the armor and then paint them in or is that just optical illusion?

Great advice from everyone. Thanks to all.

It's just an illusion. Fine line of thin rotting flesh, with a fine line of black over the top.

My advice is give up. Stop trying.

Nah but really, most rank and file man sized models I don't even try to paint the eyes, just paint them dark brown or if I'm extra lazy a dark brown wash in the sockets.

It's so hard to get good looking eyes and you should only be able to see the eyes on close inspection (from regular table top viewing distances you wouldn't be able to see the eyes anyway) so I reserve painted eyes for characters.

Most people paint eyes cartoonishly large, and to paint them realistic size and shape is actually really hard. Personally I have really shaky hands, so I have my wrists resting on a table to stabilise my hands and am resting a few of my brush hand fingers on my model hand fingers to stabilise and I still struggle to paint those super fine details (the number of times I've slipped and had to go back and touch up the surrounding face just gets annoying after a while.

The eyes winterdyne showed look great, but look how far zoomed in those pictures are, on my screen that guardsman is 6 inches tall, when an actual life sized miniature is only a bit over an inch tall, so those eyes are magnified around 6 times what the actual miniature is! Even though it looks awesome, for us mere mortals doing eyes to that level of detail is not practical on all but characters and won't be seen unless someone closely inspects our models or we take zoomed in pictures like winterdyne has done.

So my advice is just ignore eyes on rank and file models, and on bigger things like Ogryns or your characters you can try some of the techniques described by other people here.

You definitely shouldn't be using a toothpick, if you can't do it with a brush it probably means you have too much paint on your brush and/or you haven't thinned the paint down enough (paint on fine detail brushes dries faster than paint on larger brushes, so expect to have to thin it even further than usual and often rinse your brush to clean the half dried paint and pick up fresh paint).

I know several people that just paint the whole eye black, and then push the brush to the left and right with 2 coats of white, then proceed to paint the face around that, it makes it way easier to draw away from the dot as opposed to trying to make one.

I think I just have to accept my level of painting at this point as it is. I am trying to go from good TT quality to Character quality. I think I should just buy another AoBR or just keep painting guardsmen till I'm blue in the face and it will just click like everything else.

I don't think anyones mentioned it yet, but one thing thats incredibly important is to have a good brush.

If you are using a size 2 or a low quality brush that has a fork or bent tip, you are making things a thousand times more difficult for yourself, and continuing to practice with the brush is a really bad idea.

A good quality small (0 or smaller) brush with a perfect tip you can maintain is a really important purchase if you want to move up in painting quality.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:My advice is give up. Stop trying.

Nah but really, most rank and file man sized models I don't even try to paint the eyes, just paint them dark brown or if I'm extra lazy a dark brown wash in the sockets.

It's so hard to get good looking eyes and you should only be able to see the eyes on close inspection (from regular table top viewing distances you wouldn't be able to see the eyes anyway) so I reserve painted eyes for characters.

Most people paint eyes cartoonishly large, and to paint them realistic size and shape is actually really hard. Personally I have really shaky hands, so I have my wrists resting on a table to stabilise my hands and am resting a few of my brush hand fingers on my model hand fingers to stabilise and I still struggle to paint those super fine details (the number of times I've slipped and had to go back and touch up the surrounding face just gets annoying after a while.

The eyes winterdyne showed look great, but look how far zoomed in those pictures are, on my screen that guardsman is 6 inches tall, when an actual life sized miniature is only a bit over an inch tall, so those eyes are magnified around 6 times what the actual miniature is! Even though it looks awesome, for us mere mortals doing eyes to that level of detail is not practical on all but characters and won't be seen unless someone closely inspects our models or we take zoomed in pictures like winterdyne has done.

So my advice is just ignore eyes on rank and file models, and on bigger things like Ogryns or your characters you can try some of the techniques described by other people here.

You definitely shouldn't be using a toothpick, if you can't do it with a brush it probably means you have too much paint on your brush and/or you haven't thinned the paint down enough (paint on fine detail brushes dries faster than paint on larger brushes, so expect to have to thin it even further than usual and often rinse your brush to clean the half dried paint and pick up fresh paint).

That guardsman's face, start to finish took about 20 minutes. The whole model averaged in at about 3.5 hours. Ifalna's bang on the money - you NEED a good brush to do work like that. Especially quickly - a brush you can rely on (dab on pallete, backwipe on thumb, straight to the model) speeds things massively compared to having a brush that should be relegated to drybrush duties.

Skink, your posture is wrong. There's a pretty good discussion going on about ergonomics at the mo (edit: on B&C, doh!). Try elbows apart, on the desk, inside wrists touching to form a triangle. This damps and equalises any movement between your brush hand and the hand holding the model. Your hands should be just about eye level. Should cut the shaking considerably. Also check your blood sugar; some folks find that dried fruit as a snack while painting really helps. Others swear by a tot of whisky or a smoke...

But don't just accept or give up; always always strive to improve, and you will.

for good table top quality i would not worry about the eyes. If you wash the face with a brown wash, and add a tiny dot of thinned purple paint to this as well you will get good results!

I like to get regular infantry done to TT quality coat with a wash and plop it in a box. I just finished my entire infantry + baseing them the other day. Now I am going back and I am great at adding highlights / battle damage / some conversions to already finished pieces. I think what I need to do for eyes are buy some new ones and practice on them so I can just ruin them till I get it down to a method.

Like look here at these eyes.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
They are all done differently. The Ogryn was easy enough to do because he is so big I use a army painter smallest size brush and I did the Black line up the middle white lines left right then paint face. The Creed HQ I tried to do the same but he is so small his expression looks like someone gave him magic shrooms. The last one I did with a tooth pick but it looks a little off.

Oh and this sniper. Tooth Pick.

You keep making reference to brand and size of brush; you need to break the 'brush size' connection in your head; it's all about the point on the brush. After that you'll be thinking about softer versus stiffer brushes for various things, but it will come instinctively as you get a feel for what the brush is actually doing. A toothpick doesn't have any flow control or pressure response; you're effectively using it as a stamp; this is not controllable.

The majority of my work is done with a size 1 (yeah, even that chipping). I very rarely drop down to a 0 (faces) or lower (competition grade fiddly stuff only). But the point on that brush is SUPERB.

The two main issue your pictures show is order of work, and choice of colour. Paint the eyes midway through the face; this allows you to go back with the flesh tone/shade and add eyelids to stop the staring. The pupil should be touched both top and bottom unless you're doing the model looking up/down. Colour wise; pure white and black never look right; too much contrast against both each other and the skin. Use an off-white/ivory sort of colour for the whites, and a dark grey/brown for the pupil. It'll look softer and more natural.

winterdyne wrote:That guardsman's face, start to finish took about 20 minutes. The whole model averaged in at about 3.5 hours. Ifalna's bang on the money - you NEED a good brush to do work like that. Especially quickly - a brush you can rely on (dab on pallete, backwipe on thumb, straight to the model) speeds things massively compared to having a brush that should be relegated to drybrush duties.

Skink, your posture is wrong. There's a pretty good discussion going on about ergonomics at the mo (edit: on B&C, doh!). Try elbows apart, on the desk, inside wrists touching to form a triangle. This damps and equalises any movement between your brush hand and the hand holding the model. Your hands should be just about eye level. Should cut the shaking considerably. Also check your blood sugar; some folks find that dried fruit as a snack while painting really helps. Others swear by a tot of whisky or a smoke...

But don't just accept or give up; always always strive to improve, and you will.

Yeah that's kinda what I meant, for most people 3.5 hours per model is way out of our league for any rank and file model. My imperial guard army already has 40 bog standard guardsmen so that's 140 hours JUST for the guardsmen, that's just not gonna happen with me! My entire guardsman only took 40 minutes to paint the entire model, and while it doesn't look awesome like yours, I think it looks decent for a table top quality model...

http://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/385440-.html?m=2

I didn't necessarily mean to give up painting eyes completely, just realise that this stuff takes patience and time and for most people that level of detail would be reserved for characters or larger models since the rank and files won't be viewed closely enough to see realistically sized eyes anyway. If the OP wants my advice, the best return for time invested would be to drop the eyes for now and focus on shading and highlighting the skin and armour and come back to the eyes later.

Also with the shakiness, yeah I have tried lots of different ways of sitting and holding my hands. I found the best for me was, as I said, wrists/hands resting on the table, because the table doesn't move, with my hands both partially holding the model so I can keep the brush steady with the model, and then using my chair at it's lowest position on a table that's a few inches higher than normal so I'm not hunch backed while painting. There's probably something very wrong with me that causes me to shake, I dunno, I've been like that since I was about 15. When I first started collecting as a kid I could paint absurdly fine details (didn't have the accompanying skill, but had the steady hands), these days I stay away from anything that requires a steady hand.

That's a nice Guardsman, and yeah for tabletop it's more than fine.
Incidentally the Guardsmen on the Cadian box don't actually have the eyes painted. :-)

Most people seem to advise painting black and then doing white on either side of the eye... I just paint eyes white and do the pupils with an Army Painter Insane Detail Brush and concentrate/pray very hard...

I think I need to paint some nice bright shinny SM to get me out of my funk. Bright shiny colors. No eyes on most and they are bigger and easier to paint. Then I can cover them with little details all over and make custom bases.

Maniacal Laughter.

But seriously I am going to buy some new brushes today from a big art supply store. Is there a brand (i am in the US) you would suggest. I am going to get 3 a 2/0, a 0/0, and a flat size one for dry brushing. I wont be going there till after 3pm est so if you know a brand let me know. Trying not to spend more than $15 on a brush but I will if it is the best.

Normally I use just a citadel fine detail brush and I just bought a new one and have not used it yet but since I am going to the art store for more paint for my tank I might as well grab a new brush or 2.

A 0 winsor and newton series 7 along with a block of brush cleaner (the masters is excellent) will last you a long time if you take care of it, as will any decent pure sable brush.

I'm replacing mine shortly after over a year of painting with it every weekday, and it's maintained nearly no damage that wasn't due to me being an idiot and dropping it or forgetting to clean it off.