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Hmm since i went through the effort of making this, might as well as make a thread for it.

How do you guys paint your mini's faces? This is how i do mine so the hardest part (eye)
gets taken care of first so the later lighter shades wont be effected.

So far I haven't bothered painting pupils - hard enough to get the whites done right. I just go dwarf flesh, skull white for the eyes, drybrush elf flesh, badab black wash.

The latest edition of No Quarter magazine had a good article on painting faces.

Dunno what that is , also curious on how other dakka members paint theirs.

Mine are Orks - I paint the eyes red and that's good enough for me. You can go nuts and paint pupils, but that's too tough for me - one slip of the brush and you botch it!

Of course, more power to you if you do it and succeed!

I try to avoid faces at all costs (as I suck at painting them)

My DA - i'm lucky to get the eyes painted white, let alone the skin right - helmets
Tau - Helmets always (I think they look better)
Orks - green, red eyes, ether a brown or green wash

I paint my faces like this.

I do the eyes last so that I can be messy with my base colors and work on shading and transitions, then do the eyes followed by a little touchup. Admitedly my eyes are not the best and I rarely do more than a single color dot pupil. I aim mostly for nice fleshtones with a neat eye and pupil, so those details come last.

Meph

I'll assume we're talking about bare faces, as opposed to helmeted space marines.

I usually field either Imperial Guard & SoB so I have so darned many heads to paint. I go for an old IKOR Tanned Flesh or GW Eldar Flesh base, then Ogryn Flesh wash & that's it as far as line troops are concerned. Hair is painted a basic colour (brown, grey, black or white) & then given a wash of ink, or if black a highlight of Codex grey.

For officers, Commissars, Cannoneses & other 'charachter' models I'll give them Skull White eyes (two or three thinned paint wipes with as fine & new a detailing brush as I can, which builds up more cleanly than a single thick splodge) then I use a very fine black artists pen to dot the eyes. So much easier than trying to do pupils with a brush.

For my IG I now swear by Pig Iron Kolony militia heads.

I paint them pretty much the exact same as you outlined Luna.

Always paint the eyes first as I find it easier to paint around details, then paint on details and not ruin the paint job around it.

This is how I do it:
1)Tallarn flesh basecoat
2)Tamiya red brown wash
3)Eye whites and pupils
4)Paint rest of miniature
5)Tallarn flesh
6)Tallarn flesh/bleached bone highlight mix

For faces, I'll usually use a series of lighter colors:

Tallarn Flesh
Dwarf Flesh highlight
Elf Flesh highlight on the very edges (brow, cheek, nose, chin)
Then I take a 10/0 brush, and paint a thin line of white where the eyes are supposed to be
Then a dot of black in the middle (thinned black is better, for better flow)
Then when dry, a wash with either Flesh Wash, Ogryn Flesh, or Devlan Mud, depending on the darkness. I can then go back and re-highlight if its too dark.

If the white or the black eye gets messy, you can paint around the eye to shape it with flesh colors to clean it up.

Lately though, unless its a character, I've not been painting eyes. In that scale, at tabletop distance, no one can see the eyes anyway. So a quicker method uses the above steps without the white/black. The wash shades the eyes where there would be natural shade anyway.

I usually paint the eyes last since my drybrushing always seems to get a little bit on them. Then I go back and touch them up and do the highlights.

I too play Orks, and their eyes are solid red lol.
But I used to paint eyes first. For the same reason

The eyes are usually dead last for me. But faces go:

Dwarf Flesh
Flesh Wash
Any Extraneous face details (eyebrows, mouth if needed)
Eyes

For eyes I use my white carefully to make the eye, uh, white. If I screw up at this stage it doesn't matter. It can still be fixed.

I then paint the pupil black. KEY POINT! Make sure the pupil goes from the top of white all the way to the bottom. That way the guy doesn't look really surprised.

If that gets screwed up I try again with the white and do the pupil again.

After I have the eye how I want, I use a very light coat of Dwarf Flesh to cover any really obvious mistakes. If needed, I will throw a tiny drop of Flesh wash on again to get around the eye to shade and cover any other mistakes.

I go out of the way to make sure none of my models show there faces after seing how i messed up abbadon (when you stink at painting faces dont get abbadon he has a coupel dozen skulls you have to paint as well)

Since I prime white, I just use a wash of the skin colour I want, and then do the eyes and other little details. Pretty much shades itself.

I always do my eyes first and for humans I just paint the eyes black and ork's just red that's the limit of my painting skills. Then base colour, the highlights finished with a wash.

Eyes are last.

For humans:

Bestial Brown
Dwarf Flesh
Elf Flesh
Gryphonne Sepia
Elf Flesh
Black line for eyes
2 white dots for sclera of eyes.

Vampire so no black dot...

There are a number of techniques I use for eyes, as faces are by far my favourite part of painting. From the simplest to the most complex:

Washed eyes
For models that are squinting, cowled or otherwise have hooded eyes, you can simply use washes to suggest a dark area. This is the quickest and simplest method I use for eyes, and if the eyelids are highlighted sympathetically, it can still give a convincing effect. Cadians' squinty eyes work particularly well with this technique – and it's useful for eyes in hard-to-reach areas, such as the Sentinel driver example (I really must remember to paint bits like that before assembly!).
1) Paint the face as normal.
2) Apply a dark wash to the eye sockets.
3) Allow to dry and repeat until you've got a sufficiently dark area.

+++
Inked eyes
Useful for alien/glowing/magical effects etc. It's a little time-consuming, but extremely easy.
1) Paint the eye socket white.
2) Once dry, add a touch of watered down brown or black paint/ink. Quickly clean and dry your brush and touch it to the centre of the eye. This will lift out excess paint, and keep the centre bright. Allow to dry.
3) Repeat this by washing in and lifting out successive tiny amounts of black or brown until the recesses at the edge of the eye are black/brown.
If you wish, add a pupil, following the instructions in Expressive eyes later. This technique works well for bloodshot pupil-less eyes, like orks. Simply use red ink instead of brown.


+++
Initial eyes
Essentially, this techique means you paint the eyes before the rest of the face. The eyes can be as big and blobby as you like, as you 'cut in' to the overspill with the flesh tone and shading. Downside is that you can't use flesh washes to finish the face, as it'll run into the eye.
1) Paint a white spot onto the eye area, covering it completely.
2) Once dry, draw a fairly broad vertical line through the eye where you want the pupil (generally in the centre). This'll give you a weird 'cat's eye' effect, but don't worry; we'll fix that now.
3) Draw a horizontal line of your darkest flesh shade (Calthan brown works nicely for Caucasian flesh) over the lower eyelid, then over the upper eyelid. Don't worry about the area outside the eye; concentrate on squaring off the vertical stripe, edged by two white dots on either side.
4) Carefully paint the rest of the face.


+++
Side-approach eyes
A simpler version of Expressive eyes. Because white paint is easier to see, it's fairly easy to place. These instructions will get you eyes looking to the left, so swap the sides if you want your model looking right. Obviously, not very effective on models looking straight ahead!
1) With the rest of the face completed, paint the eye area with diluted black paint.
2) Quickly clean and dry your brush, and use it to lift out/adjust any areas that have gone over the edge of the eye.
3) Once dry, dip the tip of a dry detail brush (I use a 1 with a good point, but feel free to use a smaller brush if you feel more comfortable) in white, straight from the pot. Aim to pick up a drop of paint so small that it forms a near-sphere on the end of your dry brush. If it soaks into the bristles, this won't work. N.B. Synthetic brushes are your friend for this approach!
4) Touch the sphere to the right side of the eye, leaving an outline of black all round it. If it is too large, covers too much of the eye, or overlaps the eyelid, quickly rinse your brush, wet it, and gently scrub the wet paint away. Dry the area with a tissue before trying again.
5) Repeat on the right side of the other eye to finish. It's important to keep the dot of white an identical size and in the same position on one eye as the other, or your model will look cross-eyed.


+++
Expressive eyes
These are the 'proper' eyes that people struggle with. Essentially, it's a development of the side-approach eyes, allowing you to place the pupil and create an expression.
1) Paint the eye in the same way as side-approach eyes up to step 3, but instead of dotting on the white, draw a fine line across the entire eye.
2) Once dry, dip the tip of your brush into black, straight from the pot. Create a bead as in the side-approach eye, but draw the brush over the side of the pot to spread the bead over your brush.
3) Place the tip of your brush on to one eye, and carefully draw the brush down slightly to transfer a short stroke to the eye, creating a pupil. Make sure that the stroke entirely covers the white stripe to avoid a staring expression. Allow the pupil to dry completely.
4) Draw a horizontal line of your flesh shade across the eyelid if the pupil stripe touched it.
5) Repeat the process on the other eye, being careful to place the pupil in the correct place. If it's wrong, simply wet the head, gently the pupil away and start again.


Try varying the placement of the pupils – leaving a little white above the pupil stripe will result in a furious, startled or frightened appearance. White below will look wistful, thoughtful or injured; while having the pupils on one side can look sneaky, shifty or aiming in a particular direction.

Eep!

+++
Light-correct eyes
These are the most complex eyes I paint currently, simulating the natural shading of the sclera from a light source..
1) Paint the eye in the same way as expressive eyes. Allow to dry.
2) Hold the model upside-down and add an extremely dilute wash of black or brown to the eye areas.
3) Use the tip of a clean, dry brush to lift out excess wash in the middle of the eye to create a highlight, and allow to dry.


Painting eyes is more a case of patience and practise than anything else. Good luck, and hope this stuff's useful to you.

That guide makes pupils sound so complex - I just use an artist's 0.1mm indelible black pen

You could write that up.

You should write it up.

sA