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Recently got into this game, and am now painting a guard army. My only real difficulty is their eyes: no matter what I do my guys look like they're into eyeliner and crying. So does anyone have any tips on decent looking eyes, hopefully applicable by someone who has zero talent and rather shaky hands?



Here's what kind of face I can produce currently: although crappy photograph and the commander's visor obscure the eye problem a bit:

http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/298/49882284.jpg

Easiest way is simply white with a dot of black. More ambitious way is white, colour, black. I have an old brush with about 9 bristles remaining for just this task but you can use the end of a cocktail stick or even a pin to apply the pupils.

The easiest thing to do is to not try and paint in the whites of the eyes, but instead leave shading in the eye sockets (eg 1st paint calthan brown then highlight with tallarn flesh).You should also ALWAYS use a wash (normally delvan mud) it will collect in the recesses and create shading which will tie the paint layers together.

Don't use black, or white, when doing eyes.

I do eyes midway through the face process, so;

Bascoat (tallarn flesh)
Wash (Ogryn flesh); this one quite gentle, don't flood it.
Wash (Devlan mud); just in the eye socket, again, gentle!

EYES:
Line of 1:1 bleached bone and white.
Dot with Scorched brown - don't leave white above and below the dot if it's to be looking forward. On some sculpts you will want the dots off-centre (both the same side) to give direction to the look.
Tidy up with a mix of Tallarn flesh and a tiny amount of scorched brown (roughly equivalent to the shaded eye sockets).


Continue the face:
Highlight up (include eyelids, upper and lower!) as normal (I usually go through elf flesh up to bleached bone).

Glaze back:
Shade eye sockets again with a cool colour (blue/green usually). VERY gentle glazes to build up the tone.
Glaze 'high spots' (cheeks / nose) with a warm colour (baal red). VERY gentle glaze to build up the tone.

If you're feeling frisky, and your brush has a good point, you can add a dot of pure white to the pupil, offcentre and 'up' (so in a diagonal corner).