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i cant get the eyes right on my cadian troops, if there is any tips on how to paint please help...thanks

Eyes are best done part way through painting the face.

Do the whole face in Tallarn flesh.
Ogryn flesh wash. Generally you can leave it here for rank and file.

Paint the eyes with a 2:1 mix of bleached bone and white. Be as careful as you can, but don't worry if there's a little bit of a slip. Fortress grey or elf flesh work in place of bone too. Don't use pure white - it results in a bit of a psycho stare.

Dot the eye with a 1:1 mix of scorched brown and black. A largish dot works better than a tiny one. Ensure the dot points the same way on both eyes. Again, don't worry if you go outside the white a bit, as long as there is 'white' on both sides of the dot.

If you're feeling very brave (characters only), put a tiny dot of pure white over the top of the dark dot and up to one side as a highlight.

Now to tidy - with the eye 'dot' mix, add a fair bit of tallarn flesh, and use that to tidy the eye socket and eye lids. It should be just slightly darker than the washed flesh outside the eye socket.

Highlight the face and eyelids with tallarn flesh. Continue to highlight using whatever flesh mix you like. Once done, go back with a little very watered down green or blue wash and just glaze it (very very little on a fine detail brush) under the eye to give it some shade.

Everything winterdyne said, but the only thing I'd like to add is that, if you're like me have have problems creating a big dot without filling the entire eye black, a vertically slitted 'cat-eye' for pupil actually sometimes ends up looking more natural than any attempt at a dot will.

To be honest, every time I found myself trying to paint eyes, I thoughts they looked weird (and I tried many different ways).

What I think looks best, is a wash of ogryn flesh over the flesh paint, highlighting, and drawing nice angry eyebrows.

I think it looks the most natural, because painting natural looking eyes is very hard to do.

I dont have experience with Imperial Guard, only Space Marines, Plague Marines, but i think that eye painting would be pretty similar.

winterdyne wrote:Eyes are best done part way through painting the face.

Do the whole face in Tallarn flesh.
Ogryn flesh wash. Generally you can leave it here for rank and file.

Paint the eyes with a 2:1 mix of bleached bone and white. Be as careful as you can, but don't worry if there's a little bit of a slip. Fortress grey or elf flesh work in place of bone too. Don't use pure white - it results in a bit of a psycho stare.

Dot the eye with a 1:1 mix of scorched brown and black. A largish dot works better than a tiny one. Ensure the dot points the same way on both eyes. Again, don't worry if you go outside the white a bit, as long as there is 'white' on both sides of the dot.

If you're feeling very brave (characters only), put a tiny dot of pure white over the top of the dark dot and up to one side as a highlight.

Now to tidy - with the eye 'dot' mix, add a fair bit of tallarn flesh, and use that to tidy the eye socket and eye lids. It should be just slightly darker than the washed flesh outside the eye socket.

Highlight the face and eyelids with tallarn flesh. Continue to highlight using whatever flesh mix you like. Once done, go back with a little very watered down green or blue wash and just glaze it (very very little on a fine detail brush) under the eye to give it some shade.

lol, QFT, my cadians definitely have a bit of psycho stare going on

Paint the eye area black, then using the very tip of your brush, put white in the corners. Gets eyes like these:


A lot more natural looking than the tip of black instead, and you don't get crosseyed or starey eyes out of it.

seeing that picture, your eyes look better than mine. mine look like all of my guardsmen are wide eyed with terror as if they are just about to die...which most likely they are because my guardsmen have a low survivability rate(basically 1/4) usually.

nice advises i have to say!

I do eyes the same way SRM mentioned. I generally leave them to right before the final highlights though.

If you dont want them to look scared paint a biger dot in the middle of the eye.

A simple dark brown or black wash over the eye socket looks more natural than _most_ people's eye paint jobs, and at least avoids the dreaded 'wide-eyed staring' look.

MrTau wrote:If you dont want them to look scared paint a biger dot in the middle of the eye.

Or do what I did, which eliminates the chance of getting a big black blotch all over your dude's face. The black dot in the white area almost always makes your guys look super scared or derpy.