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I've been working on my High Elves for a while, and the only thing I have problems with is painting eyes. It takes a long time to actually make the eyes look ok, and even then it still looks crappy.

Maybe I don't have enough light in my painting area (which I can fix), but I do have a very fine detail brush.

Any advice or tutorial would be great.

I usually just paint the eyes white, then a very small dot as centrally as possible. And that's it.

Some people like to paint the eyes black and then the whites.

I paint eyes with great frustration and lot of aggression towards my models.

But I do it white and then rather than a dot of black, a very very thin line down the middle. I find that this helps with the 'Oh no he's staring at me wherever I move' look but also, because the models are so small, the line doesn't give the impression he has cat eyes. I think it is all about finding your own style that works for you.

For a player character, HQ, or boutique figure , I'll do a first coat of brown or black inside the sculpted socket, white inside so the dark color is just barely visible at the edges, then the iris with a 000 and a lot of patience. If you clean up with the flesh tone around it right, you can get a well defined colored eye in just a few minutes.

For hordes of chumps, a little bit of white, black micron pen, done.

paint the undercoat for the skin.
Add dark tone into recesses.
Paint the eyes (white and any other color, like, for retina or cornea..)
touch up the white and the undercoated skin, apply "makup" as needed.
apply the actual skin color, being cautious around the eyes.

wash as desired.

I usually do a line of white across and then blob up a tiny bit of black on my brush and turn on my lamp to help define the eyelids etc. (Vital unless you love buggering around with sorting out eyelids..)
Then blob up a tiny bit of black and spot it wherever you want :3

I like squinty models, and helmets...

Heres a hint of what I do, actually look at people from a distance and see how their eyes look. Generally can't see much detail so that's my suggestion, don't get too detailed on them, I have had many bug eyed figures.

These lads here have great advice^.

A great bit of advice that turned up here a while back is to do the eyes first. Then if you mess it up, you can easily start again.

+1 for micron pen. it's so easy and you don't get "durpy" eyes.

I actually stopped painting eyes on my rank and file. At gaming distances, you're not going to actually see their eyes anyway. I use a dark wash in the eye area to give it some shadow, then highlight around it to finish the face as I normally would.

I only do eyes for focal point model, large models, or characters. I painted over 100 early imperial romans, and I think the general is the only one with painted eyes.

Wash area with purple,

Paint white,

Then add a dot of black mixed with a lot of slow dry.

I start with black (or very dark brown) on eye sockets (it will define eyes and eyelids), then with ivory, very light grey or any off-white for corneas, because pure white is less natural and gives a spirited look to the model: here you can paint the "full" eye, making a roughly-almond-shaped brushstroke, or you can paint two small 'triangles', leaving the darker colour in the middle visible. If you paint the full eye, you can go two ways, depending on how steady your hands are:
. first way is painting the iris/pupil in black or dark, dark brown: don't do a dot in the middle of the white, it's unnatural; a relaively bigger dot touching the upper "eyelid" is more natural.
. second and harder way is painting the iris dot with a colour of choice (even better with a darker hue 'rim' and a lighter core), and then a tiny black dot to make the pupil, in the middle of the iris; again, the iris looks more natural - instead of staring - if it touches the upper eyelid.

If needed, retouch the eyelids with an extremely fine line with the starting dark colour.

 Dheneb wrote:
Some people like to paint the eyes black and then the whites.

That's the way I do it.

A black or dark brown linear blob into the eye socket, a thinner white line leaving more dark above then below, then finally a black dot that touches the upper edge. Allow proper drying between each stage.

Another suggestion is to paint the eyes white and use a fine technical pen to draw the pupil. You don't get the iris colour but that doesn't matter a huge amount.

Black then a tiny dot of white on the sides or a single side. It's easier if they're looking to the side instead of straight ahead of course.

First I go back over the eye socket with black or a really dark brown.

Then I actually use a very, very, very light grey. (Celestra grey if you use Citadel paints.)

Thing about going WHITE on smaller models like you see in most miniatures wargames is that it makes people look super pissed off, like their eyes are open way too wide, like they are literal crazy people. I find using something less BLINDING WHITE and more of a soft grey makes them look more realistic. Go compare a white cotton t-shirt to your own eyes sometime. You might be surprised your eyeballs are less "true white" than you imagined.

Oh, and like others suggested, I go with a thin line down the middle with black for the iris. Makes them look more fully shaped.

I do all of this after I basecoat the whole head and apply the wash, but before I do any facial highlighting. You WILL spill, and it WILL bleed, and you might need to attempt each eye several times before it looks right especially if you're new to attempting making decent looking eyeballs. Cleaning it back up into the shape of a normal human eye just comes with the territory.

 n0t_u wrote:
Black then a tiny dot of white on the sides or a single side. It's easier if they're looking to the side instead of straight ahead of course.

This is the best way to do it, and reduces the amount of "ol crazy eyes" you end up getting.

Since no one has posted links on tutorialsyet (pictures are very helpful!), here they are. I often mix these two tutorials by a bit, or use one of them each time.

http://www.reapermini.com/Thecraft/12

http://www.acrylicosvallejo.com/en_US/dates/blog/1291161600/26

Served me well so far.