Neomorte.com

Hello all,

I just painted my Striders+UA and I need some advice on how to paint their eyes. I don't have the steadiest hand so free hand is probably not the best option. On models that small, what do you guys/girls recommend?

Thanks!

I just don't. I make sure that enough flesh wash stays in the eye socket to make it dark enough to shadow the eye and call it good. Of course, since I play Protectorate, there's not that many eyes that show in the first place.

I paint all of my Nyss with completely black eyes as an effect of blight, but on other models I usually do eyes like this:

* Fill in the eyeball and surrounding creases black with either a 00 brush or a felt tip micron pen.
* Paint the eyeball with a Satin Cream color I have (an old craft paint). It's just enough off white so as not to be too bright. If I can I leave a very slight outline of black around the eye to make it pop out from the surrounding skin.
* Dot the eye whichever way the model is looking with the pen or brush used in the first step.

I've also heard of people who do step 1 from above, then put a white dot in the corner of each eye to leave the pupil in the middle black, but that never seems to work for me.

Unfortunately I don't have any good pictures of eyes in my gallery. The closest I have is this really old archer I did for a character in an RPG back in '04. All my recent pics are unfortunately either of nyss (no irises) or Protectorate (face masks).

I like your idea of painting the whole eye black for Nyss. How do you do it? The whole socket with a micron pen on just the pupil?

I pretty much use them interchangeably, but both work well.

What color skin tone are you using? I ask because I almost regret the all-black eye issue with the dark blue shading I use on my Nyss -- it blends in. I almost wish I would have/want to go back and do the eyes in a milky grey-ish white so they'd pop more. But if you're doing a lighter skin tone the black will show up real well.

My skin color is Reaper Ice Blue and I generally wash with Reaper Night Sky.

I think that nightsky is pretty close to one of the colors I use. Black might be too dark for eyes, but a gray or some such might work as well. Since the first step is painting the socket black anyway though it'll be easy enough to make the judgement call once you see it on the model.

back when i painted, i used the tip of a toothpick for the eyeball

I basically use Ein's method. It tends to work out very nicely.

One thing that makes the work a lot easier, though, is having a good brush. If you find you're doing a lot of detail work, I'd consider investing in a W&N Series 7. $10-15 may seem like a lot for a brush, but trust me, it's worth it for these. They hold a point so much better than any other brush that they're all I use for detail work these days.