Lead Adventure Forum
Miniatures Adventure => Pulp => Topic started by: Wraith on December 03, 2010, 12:58:13 PM
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I have tried mini-brushes with paint and I have tried fine tip pens, but I cant seem to get the pupils to work out, how do you folks do it!?
Wraith
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I have tried mini-brushes with paint and I have tried fine tip pens, but I cant seem to get the pupils to work out, how do you folks do it!?
Wraith
I don't paint eyes. I base this on the fact that a 28mm tall miniature held at arms length is as big as a person standing 20m away. You can't normally see pupils, eye whites iris etc, on a person standing that far off. The eyes appear as dark slits.
I am aware that there is a convention among many mini painters to do this anyway but personally I don't find that it makes miniatures look any better. Quite the opposite. Sometimes I make an exception for very dark skinned minis or fantastic creatures.
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I don't paint eyes for the same reasons as hammers, and the advice that cap'n blood gave me,
now no stress yay
dodge
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I always do the eyes the same way:
-Paint the eye sockets with a dark color (ranging from black to dark brown, depending on the effect I want).
-Paint a small white horizontal stripe on the eye ball.
-Paint a vertical triangle in the middle to show the iris+pupil. No, I don't paint the iris in a color as I think it looks silly (except on large scale miniatures).
Example:
http://paintoholic.nl/images/kev.jpg
Here are some tutorials:
http://www.reapermini.com/Thecraft/12
http://www.paintingclinic.com/clinic/eyes.htm
http://www.destroyerminis.com/eyes.php (if you want to do colored irises...advanced painting!)
http://www.paintrix-miniatures.com/articles.php?&art=7&page=3
Painting eyes is not that hard if you do it a lot. Takes practice and patience :)
For me, the eyes are a must. Without the eyes, the face lacks a focal point and the miniature is unfinished. Once a miniature has eyes, it's alive. But that's a matter of taste.
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The tutorial on Reaper is how I learned.
I always paint eyes. Eyes are when the figure turns from an interestingly shaped lump of lead into A Character.
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The simple answer from me is that on most of my minis I don't. Try looking at real people from a small distance and make out their eyes, if they are stood far enough away to appear 28mm in your eyeline you can see even less.
When I do paint them, commissions etc, I use brushes. A good tip I picked up years ago is to turn the mini upside down to do its right eye, both are then on the more natrural right hand side as you paint. Shade the top of the eye but not the bottom is another that works for me.
I paint the whites then add the pupils but I know a lot of folk do it the otherway around.
Patience and practice and the mind set to redo them until they look right - all things I sorely lack
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I don't get all this "you can't see eyes on a person at such and such a distance away" stuff. What makes a mini look good and what things look like in real life aren't always the same thing. What about when you are looking really closely at a figure? I don't tend to walk around holding my figures at arm's length, and when I take photos of them I don't make sure the shots are that small either. I find it an odd argument that I don't really understand.
Having said that, there are some notable painters here who paint fantastic miniatures without doing the eyes. But there are also plenty who paint figures with fantastic-looking eyes.
Personally it depends on the figure for me. Miniatures with clearly-sculpted eyeballs and wide-open eyes (like many Copplestone figures) look strange and dead if you just paint them as blank and dark empty sockets. They can also lend a lot of character to a figure if done well. If there is just a tiny recess or a slit, then it can be better just to leave it as a shadow. Eyes can look really shit if done badly, but I think it's a bit much to dismiss doing them outright. I don't have hard and fast rule.
Tried the pen thing, didn't work out for me.
Practice is the main thing. I will say I have started getting much better results and making less cock-ups since I started using an Optivisor, though.
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I think paint consistency is important, don't have the paint too thin.
Sometimes you can get away with only putting a dot of white to the side of the eye. The eye ball is just assumed, and the inside white is in shadow.
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I follow the same reasoning as Plynkes, i.e. if I can paint the eye, I do it. I usually pre-shade the area with some brownish wash, and after that is dried, a slight off-white or bright-white, depending on the intended effect, is added. The actual pupils I leave off until after varnishing, and paint them on either with a paintbrush or a .1mm permanent-ink fineliner.
I've found that a good way to avoid a "staring" effect is to paint in a very thin "eyebrow" or shade down the upper eyelid, then have the pupil touch this (although it MIGHT result in a "sultry boudoir look", which does have its uses, but may look quite strange, too).
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I don't get all this "you can't see eyes on a person at such and such a distance away" stuff. What makes a mini look good and what things look like in real life aren't always the same thing. What about when you are looking really closely at a figure? I don't tend to walk around holding my figures at arm's length, and when I take photos of them I don't make sure the shots are that small either. I find it an odd argument that I don't really understand.
I think very few people walk around with a miniature at arms length. I don't think you need to try it because I don't think it will enlighten you any. But I assume you do hold it at arms length, roughly, when you paint it. And on the wargaming table they are also at an arms distance most of the time.
My point is that it is not more realistic to paint detailed eyes and *I* don't think it, on a whole, makes them look better but rather surprised, frightened, stoned, possessed or horny (in a Roger the Rabbit sort of way, but that's all good if that's what you're going for). I definitely think there is such a thing as too much detail in a miniature.
If we are talking display miniatures, well, that's another story with, I think, it's own set of standards (see CMON, Golden Deamon etc).
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I don't think we're going to see "eye to eye" on this. :)
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I don't think we're going to see eye to eye on this. :)
No. :) To be honest I tried to recall whether you've painted in the eyes on the minis that I have seen but I realized I cannot remember. So obviously it is less of an eye catcher than one tends to think.
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I'm with Malebolgia on this.
Eyes are a must. Even if I do them badly, I can always re-do them.
I also do eyebrows. Eyebrows and eyes really makes the model "pop" to me.
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I too always paint eyes. I don't always use brilliant white for the cornea though, sometimes I just use my flesh highlight (especially if the eyeball is small or the sculpting poor).
I do it the way most do I guess; paint the majority of the eyeball black, then place two light dots at either end of the cornea to frame the iris, and focus the model to be looking in a direction. I almost always get sloppy with the black and don't worry if the white overflows too much because I can just go back and clean up with more thin black, then lay the flesh highlights back over that around the eye socket and cheeks.
If I'm painting all seriously for a competition of some kind, or just to really push myself, I'll do the whole colored iris and pinpoint white reflections as well (sometimes even a little faint red in the corners of the corneas), but for all the effort, it makes very little difference outside the world of painting judges.
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I do it the way most do I guess; paint the majority of the eyeball black, then place two light dots at either end of the cornea to frame the iris, and focus the model to be looking in a direction. I almost always get sloppy with the black and don't worry if the white overflows too much because I can just go back and clean up with more thin black, then lay the flesh highlights back over that around the eye socket and cheeks.
Interesting. To me, this is the hardest technique to get it right and it never works well for me. I think the "black dot on a white stripe on a black stripe" works the best for me.
Tried it several times, but it wasn't a real eye-opener to me :P
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Over a black undercoat, with a brush.
Off-white (I use Ivory) horizontal line covering where the eye would be. (Don’t worry about being too tidy.)
Black vertical line for the pupil.
With the black, tidy up where the Ivory wasn’t tidy.
First flesh coat paint upto the edge of the black.
As for painting eyes or not, I always do. Look better in photos. But then, I don’t paint armies. If I ever do, I may work on a quicker method. Then again, if I didn’t paint eyes, would I bother with finger nails? Before I knew where I was, my army types would just be undercoated. ;)
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Actually, H, I hold a figure about six inches from my nose when painting it. Taking one of my painted figures at random (Richard Burton, as it happens), if I hold him at arm's length I can't make out the eyes. If I hold him close up I can see them. I don't really see what is unrealistic about that - it seems to be working in the same way for little people as big ones.
Anyway, I ain't saying you are wrong, just that your way isn't right for me. While you may not have, I certainly have seen plenty of figures where I thought the eyes were an asset rather than the ruination of a good miniature (which I happily agree is a very common result). And the way I see it, if Kevin Dallimore or Steve Dean or Alex Bews can do it, I can fucking do it. It's just a matter of application, and being bloody-minded enough not to give up. Take all that negative "Wish I could paint like that" energy and convert it into sheer force of will to improve. That's just my way, and it works for me.
I'd rather try and paint like them and fail than not try. So maybe that means I have more than a few Marty Feldmans in my ranks, but that's a price I'm prepared to pay if it means I'm slowly getting better at it. Which I think I am. The Martys aren't nearly as common as they were five years ago.
(http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y40/Plynkes/Marty_Feldman.jpg)
Marty Feldman (1934-1982).
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Well, eye painters, keep adding miniatures to your Proptosis Brigades if you must. It is after all your fantasy. ;)
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Life's too short for painting eyeballs.
Now fingernails is another matter.
Personally, I think figures without mad staring eyes look more 'realistic' - which is a fine point, I appreciate, given that most figures do not look in the least realistic anyway ;)
And yes, most 28mm figures with painted eyes, do indeed remind me of Marty Feldman.
It is, as several have already remarked, a matter of taste. I can paint eyes perfectly in the style of the 28mm figure painting orthodoxy. But I don't like the look (ha ha!) But if you're having trouble achieving it, it's not worth getting hung up on.
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Life's too short for painting eyeballs.
Indeed. I can't paint them anyway, it always goes badly wrong. I find that, unless done very well, eyes on figures usually look cartoony at best, and awful at worst...
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I remember watching the privateer press painting DVD at the local club and the quality of my eyes increasing greatly afterwards, sadly I cant remember HOW it was done.
Yea not much help I know. ;D
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I took a class at Fall In last year, "Painting the 28mm face." It was taught by one of Reaper's star painters and she was excellent. Dark brown in and slightly around the eye socket. A thin white line, from left to right, with a dark brown pupil on the corner of the eye, as if the figure is looking to the side. This makes getting the pupil even on both sides a little easier. I have to admit that my pre-class paints look much worse than the figs that I've done since then. If you ever get a chance to take one of the painting classes at a HMGS convention I highly recommend it.
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The reaper tutorial was very useful for me. It looks good (most of the time anyway) and is the least time consuming method I've tried so far.
http://www.reapermini.com/Thecraft/12
A.
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I actually tend to paint eyes last, or nearly last, but aside from that I do something similar to the Reaper tutorial.
Except I don't use an actual brush, most of the time. I use a toothpick, sharpened with an xacto knife to a near-needle point. It holds just a tiny drop of paint, enough for the whites of the eye done as a short horizontal line, then a single point of black for the pupil.
If I wind up with mad-staring-eyes, I'll go back with my flesh highlight colour on the same toothpick-brush and tweak the lower eyelid/cheek a bit.
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Huh. I tried that a couple times and found the toothpick method to be clumsy and nearly impossible to control. I prefer my 10/0 Kolinsky, and I just paint the eyes without using magnification. It helps that I'm naturally nearsighted.
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Huh. I tried that a couple times and found the toothpick method to be clumsy and nearly impossible to control. I prefer my 10/0 Kolinsky, and I just paint the eyes without using magnification. It helps that I'm naturally nearsighted.
Likewise.
Plus when it comes to the toothpick it doesn't hold a decent, controllable amount of moisture, unlike the brush, so you can easily end up with the tiny dot of paint drying up before taking it to the figure if not quick enough. The right brush has a much finer point to it no matter what anyhow.
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I've always just painted the eyes white and used a needle dipped in black paint to mark out the pupils.
This does usually give the models a somewhat insane staring look, but meh.
They'd need to be insane to be a part of my armies to start with... ;D
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I feel like it's ultimately a matter of whether you're painting for the gaming table or the display shelf.
Stuff that's for the table doesn't need fine details, because A) it's almost always going to be seen at arms length, and B) having ready & playable pieces is a much higher priority than having complexly painted pieces. Efficiency will be favored, and since it only has be "good enough" the cap on what methods or results are considered worthwhile will be relatively strict.
Dedicated display pieces though are all about looks, and so striving for a more detailed and subtle paint job is pretty much the natural course of things. It is standard to view display pieces much closer than arms length, so detail that scales properly close-in as well as at a distance does make a critical difference. I'd say the typical intended viewing distance for a display mini is anywhere from a foot to two inches from the eye. Eyes can be painted to look natural, but it takes skill, and if a person is accustomed to seeing eyes painted with less skill than that, say by other table painters, it could lead to the false impression that it can't be done to look right.
I think the argument is mostly a case of table painters projecting their priorities & experience on to display painters and vice-versa, when in truth the circumstances really aren't as comparable as that. The two categories aren't always distinct in practice: many table painters display their figures between gaming sessions, and there's lots of people who like to paint their table minis to display mini spec. It all ends up blurring into a fuzzy edged de-facto philosophical difference in actual use, so it's easy for things to get muddled when you come full circle back to practicalities.
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Plus when it comes to the toothpick it doesn't hold a decent, controllable amount of moisture, unlike the brush, so you can easily end up with the tiny dot of paint drying up before taking it to the figure if not quick enough.
The trick is to soak the toothpick in water or whatever the appropriate thinner for your paint type is first. That way the wood acts similarly to a wet pallet, keeping the paint at the tip moist.
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I very seldom paint eyes on my 28mm figures. When I do I put a white spot in the eye socket, then a dark vertical line in the midle of the eye ball, then redo the edges of the eye in the fleshtone of the face.
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These days I seldom do eyes on my miniatures. As I paint to get units on the wargames table, doing the eyes is not worth it really - I subscribe to the 'you don't see eyes when you scale up the distances' theory.
However, when I do paint eyes, even back when I used to agonise hours over each individual figure's paintjob, I kept them very simple: horizontal stripe in off white, vertical stripe in black, and that's all. The trick, as with all painting, is to get the consistency of your paint right (for this kind of detail work, it needs to be bit thicker than for normal painting): it needs to flow smoothly of your brush but not be too thin to run into the sculpted detail.
Another tip which was touched upon a bit higher in the thread is to start, after the horizontal stripes are done, with the black stripe for the 'difficult' eye. That's the eye on the figure that matches your 'handedness'. I'm left handed, so for me it's the figure's left eye. The reason it's more difficult is that you need to reach 'across the nose' with your brush and that makes it harder to position the pupil accurately. The reason you do this first is that it is easier to match up the 'easy' eye's pupil position to the difficult one than the other way around.
Way back when, I did a blog post on this too:
http://www.nirya.be/snv/ttm/archives/000024.html (http://www.nirya.be/snv/ttm/archives/000024.html)
CU
Bart
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sometimes I do most of the time not
I find this tutorial a great help
http://www.guildwargamers.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=83&t=2512&p=22888#p22888
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I'm not really an army painter as I prefer the skirmish style games. That means each model is an individual and as such I do paint eyes if possible at all. I find eyes add a lot to the character of a model. I try to go for upside down black triangle for the iris making sure it connects to the upper eye lid.
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To be entirely fair, some of the Marty Feldman type eyes are due to the sculpting. :?
Some of my favourite sculptors “do” eyes as protruding. Personally, I remove these during the prepping stage. Unless it is a Fantasy Figure. I’m assured that Goblins, for example, do actually have eyes like Marty Feldman. ;)
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OP here.
"Most" of the minis I have painted in the past were in mass for wargaming, and I never painted the eyes.
Lately though, I have been painting characters for RPGing and after looking at some of the paintjobs on this board with painted eyes, it does make them pop.
Thats why I want to get good at it for my character minis, I just havent mastered it yet. When I get time, i will be looking at the tutorials that some have posted in this thread.
Thanks guys!
Wraith.
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I also don't paint eyes. I think a bad eye paintjob looks FAR worse then no eyes at all.
Besides, all my guys are steely eyed, with their eyes slitted in intensity. I just add some extra ink.
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As I came from a "massed fantasy armies" background, I get used to just shadow the eyesockets.
For most of my minis, a dark shade of the skin color works perfectly, as the eyes are not seen once the mini is on the tabletop anyway.
But for some character figures, if I "feel the mood" I'll panit the eyes, no matter how long it takes.
Anyhow, I use the simple method of painting all the socket a darker than skin color (for humans dark brown or black), then a thiny white or ivory strip a little larger than needed, and a black dot in the appropriate position (usually the center of the eye, but sometimes you want your figure to look sideways). After that, I "trim" the upper part of the eye with the same dark color, to simulate the upper eyelid, thus minimizing the "bug eye" syndrome.
Hope that helps.
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-shade socket
-white eyeball. use a good sized brush with a good tip. i use a size 2 for this. dilute the paint 1:1 with water
-let dry
-use marker to paint slit/dot/whatever on white
this works for me
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I don't bother. It makes the figure look silly.