How to paint eyes and heraldry

[TheTankMaker19k]

I am brnad new to the world of medieval and fantasy figures, and was hoping some of you would have some tips as to how to paint eyes and heraldry. I have painted some figures in 1/35 before, and the eyes never come out well. Any tips for both would be greatly appreciated!

 

[tonydawe]

Welcome to Planet Figure.

There is no shortage of expertise here on Planet Figure to help you improve your painting skills on both eyes and heraldry.

I'm no expert on heraldry, but the best advice I ever received on how to paint eyes was to look at your own eyes in the mirror from a variety of distances, and observe the shape, colour and size of your eyes. Observation is a critical skill in improving your painting and modelling skills. Any decent "How to" book on figure painting will show you the common techniques for painting eyes. I suggest you invest in one, and take time to observe the human face from a painter's perspective.

 

[Uruk-Hai]

Hi and welcome to the Planet!

For eyes my trick is to paint the whole slit in a black, darkbrown or darkblue colour. Then add a little bit of the whites(a mix with about 1/3 flesh and 2/3 white) in one corner or both. Just a tad bit as the white part of an eye usually is no more of the area than 1/3.

Free hand heraldry is hard. But I have done ok in the past and I cant even draw a straight line with a ruler. I use Humbrol but make sure that the base coat is really dry, then when painting the pattern I can trim, or erase mistakes by whiping it away with the brush dipped in solvent. Touch up with the basecolour, and you do all this back and forth until you have the result you like. If you like me, dont have natural talent it will take some time but in the end get the job done.

You can also sketch the intended pattern with a coloured pencil before to get an idea of the layout.

Hope this helps.

Cheers
Janne Nilsson

 

[TheTankMaker19k]

Thanks for the tips! We'll see how this one turns out!

 

[megroot]

Free heraldy is a great task and very diffcult.
I use for outlining stencils from Tommi Worton. This is given a more relaxt feeling when you painting heraldy. It's making live much easyer.
Here's the link:http://tommi-miniatures.moonfruit.com/
Look under online shop.

Marc

 

[Anders Heintz]

Here is one way to paint eyes on a 54mm figure.