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Hi All

Apologies just in case this has appeared in a previous thread (cannot search due to a Dakka Dakka HTML error!!), but I need help on painting eyes on humanoids (eyes with pupils!). I know many people don't agree with painting eyes but I do like them. I used to paint eyes (which was hit and miss somewhat!) and recently haven't been bothering!

Does anyone have some fail safe techniques etc?!?!

Cheers

Andy

Paint the eyes black, then wash with watered down (milky)white paint.

The white will settle around the edges of the eyes and leave the pupil black.

Biggest problem with painting eyes is that they end up being too damn big. Couple that with the likelihood of having overly big and stark pupils imperfectly aligned and you get the dreaded (and omnipresent) "crazy eyes" effect.

My recommendation to counter this? Paint the eyes first. Base the head in a dark flesh tone, get your white down, then paint a thin black vertical line for each pupil. Yes, line. Dots simply don't look natural, as the iris/pupil is usually occluded somewhat by the upper eyelid. I'd also suggest having your mini "looking" slightly to one side or the other. Dead-center pupils are never quite dead-center and it's far easier to notice misalignment in that position. Once you've got that down, break out your flesh base again and carefully clean up the edges, dialing the eyes down to their proper size.

You'll have to take extra care not to splodge paint or wash onto the finished eyes while tackling the rest of the face, but I haven't had good results leaving them for last. They're just too damn small for me to paint properly without spilling over onto the lids and ruining the look.

oadie wrote:

My recommendation to counter this? Paint the eyes first. Base the head in a dark flesh tone, get your white down, then paint a thin black vertical line for each pupil. Yes, line. Dots simply don't look natural, as the iris/pupil is usually occluded somewhat by the upper eyelid. I'd also suggest having your mini "looking" slightly to one side or the other. Dead-center pupils are never quite dead-center and it's far easier to notice misalignment in that position. Once you've got that down, break out your flesh base again and carefully clean up the edges, dialing the eyes down to their proper size.

This is how I do it. I used to try to get actual color in the eyes, but I haven't figured out how to do that without it looking like mascera or making it look like their eyes are aglow.

Thanks for the tips! I will try both of them and see what looks best! I have been thinking for some while about painting eyes first then the rest.

Cheers

Also, never use pure white. Bob Ross taught me that.

My best advice is whatever method you chose remember that when your painting eyes there's going to be very little paint on your brush so make sure you water down your paint a lot and work fast as the small amount of liquid will dry very quickly. All the above methods work just pick one that suits your painting style and maybe add in my advice and you should be good to go.
As you said it can be good to paint the eyes first if your starting with black then adding White as you can cover any spreading with the flesh colour after you finish the eyes. I always do the eyes first as a general rule. And I always try and paint the deepest parts of the rest of a model first so I don't have to try and get a paint laden brush in between finished areas of colour, potentially blobbing paint on mixed colours.
Good luck. Update us with your results.

I'm seconding Silver's method, it sounds pretty much exactly the same way I do eyes. Though I paint the eyes black then put a small dot of white. To help them not look goofy mine pretty much always end up looking right or left, really depends on the overall direction of the model as the eyes can effect that greatly.

They just need to match and don't need high levels of detail. I've tried, but you just can't see it unless you magnify it by heaps so it's not worth the extra effort.

Micron Pens make it so much easier.

Invest in a black one for pupils.