Tutorial - Painting eyes

posted by roman, jarhead, kong

Howwabbaabaa!

This article is about a describtion on how to have a go on eyes at miniatures. Sure there are different ways of doing so, i simply show you mine in two different ways to reach the goal. First one at an 28 mm Miniature and the second at a 33 mm bust by Wonderlands Project.

I. The theory of the eye
Always take a good look at nature, it can tell you so much about mostly everything you want to know when it comes to a question like "Hey, how can i paint this specific part on a miniature?" - go use google or often it hels looking in the mirror... Ok, this had to be said :)

The most important place on a miniature is very often its face. The face is the reason for its character, the colours you've chosen and for sure the view of the eyes - everything plays together. I seperate the eyes, when painting them at miniatures in 3 different areas: the white, the iris and the pupil. Here comes a describtion sketch that shows you thes same words in german:

The following examples will show you this theory in form of an human eye, you can see a point of light reflex in mostly every eye that is hit by light from somewhere:

When taking a closer look at the white area while the person is strongly looking to one side in the extreme you may recognize some more red in the other corner of the eyeball (oh yes those are my eyes, ugly, haha):

For further, more detailed theory about the eye i would propose this article and those great photos over there too.

II. Practical exercises on a 28 mm miniature face
Painting eyes on miniatures is definatly something horrible and you have to choose yourself how far you train yourself with that, you might go mad at it. For sure it is something that can make your models even better, but the eyes of a miniature are not the best spot on a miniature to train your skills. It is a nice addition to a display miniature or a bust to have great eyes but i won't propose to to highly detailed eyes when painting 200 imperial soldier boys. For everything shown here you might need practice and you got to give it more tries than only one. I am often really bad when it comes to place eyes, you know that evil look that can happen, haha - rewind and do it again. It is a matter of patience first...

Easy version:
A way that i mostly use for gaming miniature, simple and effective:

- Painting the area of the eyes black or very dark
- Painting this area with white or very bright afterwards, taking care to leave a thin black line left
- Setting the pupil with black or very dark

For example:

Advanced version:
You can give the Iris some colour and bring in a tiny point of a light reflex. Please don't take this as a must have, sometimes it is even better to leave it without. It is always like you want to and if it fits to the miniature. Same procedure like in the easy version:

- Painting the area of the eyes black or very dark
- Painting this area with white or very bright afterwards, taking care to leave a thin black line left

- Setting the Iris colour
- Setting the pupil with black or very dark
- Setting a reflexation point with pure white

For example:

Some more examples show how different eyes can look with the use of this technique:

How to do the Iris:
I've learned to use a toothpick as it is easier to handle than a brush. I check the coloured tip of the toothpick on my fingers to see how big the dots will be, like in this article. If the dots are too big, use another toothpick or try to sharpen it with your scalpell, carefully. After testing on my finger i put the Iris by making a small dot.

How to do the light reflex:
I use pure white here, minimally thinned with water ,but that is only because all my colours are mostly dust, haha. I use a brush with a really good tip and dip it into white, but only the final end of the tip. Now hurry up to the eyes and bring it on, you ain't got time to waste if you don't want the dot to dry on your brush tip. Using mostly pure white for such small details means that it will pop out a lot and in my eyes this works well with such a small detail. For sure there is no need to set this point and often when you do you have to start all over again with your eye-work, but that's the way it is :)


III. Practical exercises 33 mm bust

This bust really has some nice eyes to work with and you can control the character of the sculpt a lot with your setting of the eyes. There is not really something new in the progress, i just want to show it to you so you might get a better feeling of what you can do when painting eyes on miniatures.I went the normal way like described at the advanced technique, but i did forget to make the first three photos, so here you go:


- Painting the area of the eyes black or very dark
- Painting this area with white or very bright afterwards, taking care to leave a thin black line left

- Setting the Iris colour (i have used Hawk Tourqise here)
- Brining a small highlight with ice blue to the Iris

- Setting the pupil with black or very dark
- Setting a reflexation point with pure white

IV. Final Thought
 It ain't a easy task to paint eyes on miniatures and if you fail sometimes it is fine, that's normal. Simply give it another try - practice and patienceis everything.

I hope this article helps you on your path and in the end we all shall see the light :)


Keep on happy painting!
Regards
Roman