First time doing eyes in 1 10 scale . Boy do eye have alot to learn. View attachment 188569 View attachment 188569

You'll get there, but the photo is a bit off, hard to judge. Looks like a start to me, you can trim it up.



Steve Deyo

Part of the problem is everything is so pale. Not a bad look to go for but it really adds to the difficulty of getting the eyes right. I'd start by looking at gothicgeeks article on painting eyes and going for a lighter eye colour.
Tried to find the article but couldn't (using phone) but I'm sure someone can provide the link.

You'll find Mark's 'Mini Eye Tutorial' in the Articles tab above.

Andrew

Hi Samson, at the moment she looks startled, you need more iris and less white, the white should be more of a grey, that way you can highlight it with white, and the upper eye lid should be covering approx 1/3 of the iris. Apart from this, she's coming along nicely.
Best wishes, Gary.

Best tip I can give you is print a picture of the eyes of someone (a closeup) and place the picture right next to your model and just paint what you see. The beauty of acrylic and thin oil paints is that you can add layer after layer to correct and precise your painting. You don't have to reach perfection the first time you lay paint.
Cheers
alex

To be brutally honest the first thing you need to concentrate on before the eyes is your photographic skills.
No one here can give you an honest appraisal of your painting based on those pictures.....and it's not just the quality of the pictures but their size as well. It took me a very long time to download the over sized pictures.....they should be resized down to a more manageable size.
You'll get all the help you need with painting eyes once it's clear what you've painted... cheers

http://www.planetfigure.com/pages/Photographing-miniatures-and-figures/
http://www.planetfigure.com/pages/Mark-Benette-Eye-Tutorial/

No worries it all comes with practice, painting and photography. Persevere, don't stress, just enjoy what you are doing. It is easy to go "mini-blind" you know there is a mistake but just can't see how to fix it, just take a step back for a day or so and come back to it with fresh eyes. I usually have to repaint an area at least twice before I am content. Honestly, I have a bin of figures I have started but become so frustrated they were not working out the way I envisioned them I just tossed them into my "One day..." pile.

I suggest getting a tripod if you don't have one, as well, and set your camera to self timer if it has that option. From the picture that seems to be the issue because the focus seems good, but the blur is from minute movement.

If you dont want to get a tripod, use a bean bag to stabilize your camera. A zip lock full of lentils or other dried beans works. I don't think things are as dire as you describe them. Eyes look like they need some shhading in the irises, a pupil and some outlining in the lids.

Colin

Here is my littel advice:
1. Never use pure white for the eyeball, but a lighter color then skincolor.
2. Make a wash with a dark brown and let it go into the eyesockets.
3. When dry make a darkred wash and put that into bothe corners of the eye.
4. Make a ellips circle with black.
5 . If dry: fill the ellips with the iris color that you want.
6. when all is done, put a small black dot into the iris.
7. If perfect dry take a gloss varnish and do the eyes with this.
8. I use the varnisch to avoid the catchlight with looks akward to me, when you looks from another direction to the bust then frontside.
Numbers 2,3 and 4 can be done after the pupil into the iris and before the varnish. That's up to you.

Marc

Thanks for the info I plan on getting a better camera and a tripod sorry for the pics. pain medicine gives me the shakes . I will try to give the eye's another go and post better pics when done should be corrected easily as it is water color the whites if the eyes are done with vallejo off white . Any better color I should be using .? Thanks all

Plenty of good advice. I did a post on painting eyes a little while back over on my blog
http://powellminipainting.blogspot.com/2014/06/eyes.html
Here is a close up of an eye from a 90mm figure of mine.


My general process is to start with a reddish pink (violet red mixed with skin tone). When I go back over with my off white color, I leave some of the pink in the corners. If a little is left along the lower edge of the eye, that's fine too. For the off white I start with Reaper's Weathered Stone and then start to mix in some Leather White. Here's basically what the colors look like so you can find some Vallejo colors that are close.


For the isis, I start with a dark color (something like a Prussian Blue) and then fill it in with a lighter shade. In doing so, I try to leave a dark border around the iris. I also do some shading with the lighter shades. Unlike the usual approach, the bottom of the iris usually gets the most light and the top is darkest. When all that is done I go in with black for the pupil. You can use both hands to help steady the brush. I actually paint in the catch light using pure white, but at the larger scales a gloss varnish can work just as well. Add a dark line along the top of the eye. This is the shadow on the bottom of the upper eyelid and can also double as the eye lashes.

I also think it helps to paint the eyes looking somewhere. It looks like the head in your sculpt is turned slightly to the left. So I would continue that with the eyes and have them slightly off center to the left. To do this, I start with a small dot for the irises (not the whole iris). Then I can step back and compare how they look. Maybe they're perfect or perhaps they're a bit cross eyed. You can easily fix this by making subtle shifts as you expand them to full size.

I've also seen people use water color pencils to draw in the iris and pupil before going over it with paint, so that's another option for you.

Here's a good practical guide to eye painting~

Thanks all for taking the time to post and help I will give it another go this weekend. Bailey that looks awesome.

I agree with the rest, the photo makes it difficult to give good advice (though it's still honest advice). But nevertheless, the tips about the brightness are very good ones, starting with your choice of colors. I'd also say that I'd want to "cut" the size of her eyes, by lowering her upper and raising her lower eyelids just a tad. That would help knock down the "pop-eyed" look. She looks startled.

I remember a tutorial, albeit on painting anime eyes, but the basic techniques and principles are the same. The author, working in the large scales that we find with anime figures, even went so far as to pencil in lightly the outlines of the iris and other colored regions, once he had laid down his eyeball color. If I can find it, I will link it back here.

Prost!
Brad

Good thread. Following this, I should be able to paint better eyes. But laying in those pupils on a 54mm is tough.

Thanks all for the info .hope to post better pics from round 2 soon