WHEW! This eyeball is going to be the death of me yet! First it was painting it, then repairing it, and now it's painting it again! ARGH! lol!
I had an email discussion with a friend about painting eyeballs. He's very good at it but all of the creatures he had painted had round pupils. I asked him how he would translate his technique for something with a horizontal pupil. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get back with him on it.
So I dove in and worked on the blue eye anyway and every time, I'd end up scraping off the paint. I did that for a full day Monday. Then yesterday I start the same routine. Get it close, WOOPS, scrape. Get it close, WOOPS, scrape. Of course, after the first couple times WOOPS became something not repeatable in polite company. lol!
While doing this, I'd randomly snap pictures of my work. I'm trying to stay in a habit of doing that for my WIP thread, articles and documentation in general. But I found myself constantly uploading the photos and studying them. Then I realized what happened. I achieved the look I wanted but was too blind to see it. Seriously, it sucks getting old! My eyesight is honestly still very good but it used to be better and I'm noticing the difference now. I didn't see I had gotten the effect I wanted until I had looked at the photos but it was too late, I scraped the paint off!
This was the first pic I spotted. Now the edges on this are very sloppy but those I could have cleaned up quite easily. This is really what I was going for...see the feathering between the pupil and the iris? THAT is what I'm trying to get and it's a heck of a lot harder than it looks.
My current technique is okay and works - but only part of the time. It's very difficult to get consistent results because it depends on the fluidity of the paint and how fast it dries. Too much fluid and I get a big mess, too little and I don't get any blending. So I was experiementing a little since I was having such a hard time with it (my technique is demonstrated a ways back in the thread).
This is the second pic I saw.
I totally didn't realize that I hit the look because my eyesight betrayed me. So...I found a solution. I used the camera as my eyes.
I could plaster this thread with a huge contact sheet of eyeball shots, but I won't. lol! Instead I'll post the main points and I'm sorry but there are still too many pictures in this post! The real problem was, I didn't remember exactly what I did because I was experiementing and that was a bit ago before I scraped the paint off.
But the key to this whole thing is ink. I use the Windsor & Newton Inks and for somethings I water them down like crazy because they are so strong, or I don't water them down at all, or in this case, I didn't shake the bottle, because I wanted more water than pigment on the top.
I start out like usual, off white base over the entire eyeball, followed by brown ink. Let dry. Paint a black circle allowing for any off white scelera I want showing. Then put a basecoat of light blue down, leaving only a tiny rim around it of black. I then start working with very light blue and my base color, just touch blends here and there, I did a little work of the technique my friend described, but like I said, I'm experimenting.
Normally after I get the blends of blue how I want them, I'd paint the horizontal pupil black and hope the paint is still wet enough to get my feathering without going nuts and wiping everything out with the black (which was happening all the time thus the reason I was scraping paint off).
For the eye above I used my blue ink and applied it as the pupil instead of black. It is still tricky, too much and you wipe everything out, not enough and it's pointless while horsie looks like he's on crack. But this time, once I put the ink down, I grabbed my camera then immediately uploaded the pics.
Better but even accounting for shadow, it's still not right...too large. So I added more paint and blended just a touch and was careful to work around the horizontal pupil I had made with the blue ink.
Again I took pics and checked them on the computer.
Better but the wrong shape and too small. But the quality of the blue ink, when applied to a small enough area gives me a very dark pupil. So that's a good foundation to build on.
Again close but not quite there yet the blending isn't very good and it's still not right. The eye doesn't look good the iris needs to be closer to the nose.
I took more paint and corrected the iris bringing it closer to the nose. Then returned to the blue ink and worked on the pupil. This went back and forth many, many, many times which is why I can now wallpaper my entire home with photos of this eyeball.
So hit the fast forward button here.
One step at a time, I brought the pupil closer to the center and this is all with the blue ink.
Paint a little, take photos, load pics on laptop, check photos, paint a little more, take photos....wash, rinse, repeat.
Hey now, that's looking a lot better!
Every little step of the way, I keep taking pics and examining them. This one showed me I still needed to get the pupil closer to the nose...just a tad.
Back and forth - too much or not enough.
I kept plugging away but relied on the photos to tell me what I needed to do instead of my eyesight. The pic above told me I was pretty darn close! I started applying black paint to the pupil but had to be oh so careful I didn't obliterate the blue ink. I just wanted the black in the center and leave the blue ink as it is around the edges.
All right! That's much better!
I also use the angle from the back and side to check the depth of the paint and if it's starting to get too many layers. Plus, I touched up the edges of the eye and the off white in the corner that's still showing.
And tadaaa!!!
Will ya look at that! That ain't half bad all things considered.
And for fun here are two pics at 100% so you can see the feathering the ink helped me achieve. I just wish they were a little neater but hey, right now I'll take what I can get.