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So, today as I was painting up one of my Space Marines I noticed the ridge above one of their eyes. While it hasn't been something I've had to contend with before, now I find myself wondering: is it merely supposed to be the upper portion of the ocular cavity, or is it an actual eyebrow, intended to be painted the same color as the rest of the Marine in question's hair?

What do you guys think? Should I paint his eyebrows as if they are there, or do Space Marines shave their foreheads?

Eyebrows in general will look 'wrong' on small scale miniatures. If you want a heavy brow-hair look, start with a 50-50 mix of the flesh tone and the hair colour and paint an EXTREMELY thin line at the bottom of the brow ridge.

Generally though, it's quickest and easiest to avoid them and put a deeper shade in the eyesocket. Your eye and brain interpret the rest at anything other than an extremely close view or high magnification.

I paint my eyebrows on my minatures, mainly because I play space wolves and fluff wise they are feral in their physical appearence, so the eyebrows work well for me, but I agree with winterdyne, a 1:1 mix will work for you

I wouldn't bother with eyebrows on bareheaded marines. Anything I added would likely look too stark, if it was dark enough to be noticeable, at all. Eyebrows are like irises - if someone is missing them at normal scale, it would look weird. At ~28mm, you'd barely be able to see them, if they're kept in scale, so I consider it better to let the viewer's brain fill in the gaps than have something stark and oversized, which feels more unnatural than a total lack, which can be mentally made up for.

If glancing around a crowded room, I feel like someone with massive, dark, bushy brows would stick out more than someone with pale, barely visible ones. Same idea applies here, in my opinion - nothing is less conspicuous than too much, and the effect almost has to be overdone to be noticed.

On my bare guard heads I ignore the eyebrows.

Any model without a helmet should lose their armor save and Eternal Warrior - because they are slowed.

dont think ive ever painted on eyebrows, youd have to be really careful with it

My personal recommendation is to use two washes of Reikland Fleshshade over the base color of your model before you apply highlights, this will sink into the recesses of the model's "brows" and give the proper effect, painting on the eyebrow would make it look a little silly in my opinion. After the Reikland Fleshhade wash, I would apply Agrax Earthshade or even Badab black into the deepest recesses of the model, and then apply your final highlights, this should create the illusion of eyebrows without having to actually paint them.

Depends on my mood at the time, and the sculpt of the model...

Ignore generally, though I have started to attempt to paint them with a very thin line.