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Morning everyone. I am in the process of painting some Space Marine test figures, and I am running into a slight problem. How in the world can you paint the eyes without feeling like you are going blind? Such a small surface area and I am seeing some outstanding work from other users, but when I look at my figures, I am not seeing any way to paint such a small area without messing up the surrounding area.
Well, that's my weekly rant. If I get suggestions the more the better!

Well this is a Painting question so the best place to get an answer is the Painting & Modelling Forum, where eyes come up quite often in fact.

I shall move it forthwith.

Sorry about that, thanks.

I tend to do the base coat for the eyes after the primer, do the details using a really thin arts pen if they are not to deeply set to negate the effect then paint the skin around them to allow me to easily shape the eyes then add the shades, wash, glaze depending what I am doing after that.

Sure everyone does it differently, but I find this the least stressful and least likely to cause errors, so I suppose eyes are always the first thing I paint oddly

I only do eyes if they are prominent on the actual sculpt, but then I do the eyes and flesh basecoat in one go so I don't paint over anything.

 sing your life wrote:
I only do eyes if they are prominent on the actual sculpt, but then I do the eyes and flesh basecoat in one go so I don't paint over anything.

Yes I agree with this a lot, I tend to only hint at eyes on models such as space marines as they tend to be deep set. Something like a Dark Elf Sorcerer though they are prominant and worth doing well.

To hint I just throw Seraphim Sephia in there follow by a small amount of blood for the blood god just to give a red tint, sometimes worth covering it with a bit of nuln oil to stop it being shiney, but it helps to stop your daftly helmetless marines looking eyeless.

Another simple trick, is to prime, paint the eyes first THEN paint the armor color around the eye lens. That way you can be sloppy on the eyes, going out of the lines and such, and simply clean it up with the marines armor color.

It will come with practice but for somebody starting out the easiest way, is to do the eyes first as mentioned. That way you can mess it up without wrecking the whole model. An insane small brush and strong light source helps as well.

You guys have been a big help. Since I am airbrushing the base colors I am going to have to work out the tips you all have passed along, but that is al part of the fun, yes?

Prime, do the eyes, maskol them, paint?

Really though, I relearnt how to paint minis with the hobbit set, those dudes are tiny. Doing space Marines now is easy.

I put down a layer of black, then a layer of white leaving an outline, then a thin vertical line. A decent brush, from the side and there is little you can ruin. But even then, touching up flesh isn't hard, and surely you aren't painting eyes on the helmets?

The vertical line is the hard bit, but thinned paints help a lot.

On helmets I am seriously considering doing the glowing eyes trick for some ba terminators I have next

For the more advanced eye, I recently posted an article on the Discount Game Inc Blog that talks about painting eyes.

http://www.discountgamesinc.com/blog/the-hobby-corner-15/

A.

also having a modelling lamp helps a ton. I have a posable one that has a magnifying glass built into it so I use that when I'm getting down to really fine details

Eventually I am going to have to learn how to paint the eyes. For the helmets I am finding the lens is still pretty small, but I believe that had more to do with the color of the basecoat and the lighting I was using. (Was not at my model building desk)

For small models and details I just bought a pair of 2x and 3x reading glasses. I find it more flexible than the mounted magnifier glass.