The Eyes DON'T Have It!

[daredevil]

Well, I was riding easy for a while there--painting figures with shades or helmets--now comes the time to paint THE EYES! I have a 70MM figure & a 54MM figure that I am working on concurrently--and am at the point where I need to do the faces. I tried for an hour & a half last night doing, undoing, and redoing the eyes on the 70MM. If I'm having that much trouble on that one, what's going to happen when I do the 54MM?!!

I tried Shep Paine's method, and I tried doing it the hard way (via dots of paint with my mircoscopic brush) and I'm still goofing them up. Any other methods you guys would like to share?

--Linda

 

[renarts]

On 54mm I just use a dark brown wash in the eye. If the figure is depicted outside, then it looks fine as it apears to be squinting. If you look across the road at someone standing outside, its rare that you see any of the whites of their eyes because they are squinting. A dry brush of light flesh to pick up the highlights of the lower lids does it for me.
The larger sized figures I'll try to do some whites and pupils, but if it at all looks like I can get away with doing the sme thing as the 54's I will.

 

[daredevil]

Thanks Mike--I'm going to go try that right now!
--Linda

 

[godfather]

For the 54 mm I paint the eye an off white almost the same as the flesh base tone, then with a very sharp and stiff small brush paint the pupil black then add a lighter colour inside to add depth, but considering you are having trouble disregard the addition of the second colour. For larger eyes same technique but the whites being more pronounced (ivory + light grey or flesh) then with 0 or 00 brush add the pupil (you choose colour) if you make them to big or small you can then remedy this by using the eyeball colour to shape the pupil ( if too big). I paint the eyes before I paint the face so that I can use the base colour to shape the eyes if any colours stray. Keep practicing I am no expert but have gotten to the point where I can add upper and lower colours in the eye ball to make them stand out and add an iris to the pupil. I still screw up more often than not but don't get frustrated takes time but it will come. Good luck.

 

[MattMcK.]

Hi-
I use brushes now, but when I started I used to do eyes with a dot of paint on a sharpened tooth pick. If you practice on scrap paper you can get a good feel how sharp the point should be and how much paint to load on the tip. It's almost a micro stamp. A careful wash can catch the edge of the lid fo a top shadow. Hang in there!
Matt

 

[thegoodsgt]

As always, I'm a contrarian. I paint the eyes after the face is complete, using a brush that I use only for eyes. I paint the eye an off-white as Talino describes and allow that to dry completely. Then I go in and paint a tiny arc for the underside of the upper eyelid and then paint the pupil. After that dries I can touch up any errant spots with my flesh color.

Despite what the books and magazine articles say, there are no "tricks" to painting eyes. It takes lots of practice and experimentation to find a technique that works for you.

 

[Steve]

Linda, I think you were on the right track with your first attempt; Shep's method is what I use to teach figure painting students. Horizontal stripe of off-white, vertical stripe of color, trim to shape. Until your own eye technique develops (unless you quit, it will, honest), this is a great technique to practice as it is SIMPLE. To help, you may consider practicing making tiny crosses on scrap or paper. But I think this to be the simplest way to get to where you want to be--

 

[KeithP]

You can also get a better feel for painting eyes (and faces!) on larger scale figures rather than 54mm to begin with.

The other advice that I give is study drawings and photo's to see proportions of the eye, pupil, catchlight, etc. This helps me a great deal.
Also, when placing the pupil in the whites, start off with the eye opposite the hand you are painting with. Sounds kinda nuts but this helped me alot, too.

I use the old Henny Youngman joke, "A man asked me how do I get to Carnegie Hall? I told him practice!" As mentioned, for eyes, the more you practice the better you'll get...

Keith

 

[Einion]

Originally posted by KeithP@Jun 15 2005, 05:09 PM
Also, when placing the pupil in the whites, start off with the eye opposite the hand you are painting with. Sounds kinda nuts but this helped me alot, too.

Keith suggested this tip before in a recent thread that mentions painting eyes (worth searching for as there are more tips there Linda) and it's a very good one - paint the difficult eye first, the one where the nose gets in the way of the brush, as it's a lot easier to do the easy one to match it than the other way around.

Manfred first suggested this to me when I mentioned how hard it was sculpting eyes to match and it really helps when painting them too.

Einion