How do you folks paint eyes?

[Wraith]

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

[Hammers]

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.

[dodge]

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

[Malebolgia]

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.

[Froggy the Great]

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.

[Svennn]

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

[Plynkes]

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.

[Bugsda]

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.

[Westfalia Chris]

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).

[Hammers]

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).

[Plynkes]

I don't think we're going to see "eye to eye" on this.  

[Hammers]

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.

[richarDISNEY]

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.

[number9]

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.

[Malebolgia]

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