Painting Eyes- Or, How Not To!

[Deleted]

I just had a bit of a revelation a while back.

It takes incredible co-ordination and muscle control to paint the eyes on a miniature. It takes the same amount of control not to kill something when things don't go quite right.

A thought occured to me a while ago- why not use a pen to dot the black eyes?

Seriously. Get a super-fine or variant pen and just paint the whites of the eyes. Then dot the irises in and seal them so it won't smudge.

Anyone use this before?

[rarves]

No, but I've thought about it. Never been able to find a pen with a small enough tip, so if you find one send a link, thanks. But in related news I found at my Wal-Mart a white pen that is great for making the white part of the eye.

[Mabus]

Cheaters....

[Ciaphas Cain]

Hmmm, sounds actually like a sound strategy.

Cheers

CC

[angelusmortis]

I've tried it. IMHO, its easier with a brush. Reason being, paint pens, even super-fine tips, will tend to get a very small glob of paint on the tip. So, even though the tip looks real small, when you try to apply it, more paint gets dispensed than what first appears. So it really puts you in the same situation. I tend to use a ratty old brush, with a ton of bristles sticking out haphazardly. Then I dip just a single strand in paint to get a very tiny glob of paint on it, then I absorb a portion of that on a paper towel till its almost gone, then I paint the eye. That, to me, is the easiest and gives the best results.

[mardaddy]

Paint pens are far to clumsy. Use a Pigma Micron Pen (brand name)

It also works well for doing litanies and such, though because the fiber tip is what it is, and it is being used on paint, and not for the purpose for which it was designed, the pen itself does not last long and requires replacement fairly often.

It's for that reason I switched back to using a brush.

[fatuous]

Turtle boy gave an excellent How To in a previous eyes thread, which basically involved painting the eyes first then adding the flesh on top giving u more room to make mistakes.

Quick search'll no doubt bring up the full details, deffo worth a read if ur struggling with eyes (mine are all flesh coloured atm

[rarves]

I do the eyes first and then the flesh as well. It works well.

[Turtleboy(AWOL)]

I'll reiterate here for ease of not having to use the searchy function

step one to painting faces: paint white over whole eye area, making no effort what so ever to stay within the lines - you actually want the entire upper face white, that's perfectly fine

step two... well before step two a word from our sponsor:

WINDSOR NEWTON PAINTBRUSHES! SUPER FINE TIP AND ONLY $2.49!

seriously, these paintbrushes are >the< best brushes on the market. they keep an insanely fine tip (yes, literally as sharp as a single stray hair on a brush and the fact you have all the paint in the body of the brush means that as you paint from that 1 hair wide tip, more paint is filling so you can go for a while before needing more paint...it's just goodstuff, and why not spend 2 and a half whole bux for the best?)

anyway, step 2: make vertical lines where you want the pupils across the eyes of the models, leaving a bit of white on each side of the vertical line that's still on the models 'eyeball.'

step 3: take your base flesh tone and paint the face, covering up all your messiness and leaving only the fancy eyeball remaining

step 4: do your thing about painting the rest of the face, have fun, cuz you're done with the eyeballs

*edit*

I had some examples up, but I was just painting and did the pilot for one of my modified sentinels, so I took the opportunity to do a tutorial with pics...here you go

[kommissar]

windsor newton stuff is gooooood.
ive got a bunch of inks form them i use and they really are perfect.