Painting eyes on Lord of the Rings miniatures.

zenmaster

New member
Hi, I\'ve been painting for a number of years and consider myself a damn good painter. But, those Lord of the Rings miniatures are so small that it\'s difficult painting eyes on them. So far on four figures I have ended up just shading the eye area. But this does not look professional. There has to be a difference between painting eyes on your standard sized GW figures and the Lord of the Rings miniatures. Does anyone have any tips. I even bought jeweler\'s magnification goggles and they don\'t help. I admit that I have allways painted eyes a bit large. They end up looking like anime eyes. But this never looked bad. On those smaller sized LOTR figures ,though, you can\'t get away with it. I look forward to any help I can get. Thanks.
 

Coyote

New member
not painting eyes is not unprofessional, it\'s knowing your scale. For example, check out these 20mm WWII figures

0024.jpg


I didn\'t paint them, and am just linking to a pic on the manufacturers website. Anyway, the eyes aren\'t painted with white and all that. They\'re just painted black. Looks good though.

However, if you are keen on doing eyes, the trick is to paint them first, then cut in with your flesh colour to get them the right shape and size.
 

Trevor

Brushlicker and Freak!
If you look closely at some of the Heavy Metal painted hobbits they don\'t have the eyes painted either.

One way of painting small eyes is to paint on a white line in the eye area, don\'t worry about getting it exact, then do a black line down the middle, then go round the edges with a dark flesh colour leaving a white slit with a black dot in the middle.
 

KingM

New member
One way of painting small eyes is to paint on a white line in the eye area, don\'t worry about getting it exact, then do a black line down the middle, then go round the edges with a dark flesh colour leaving a white slit with a black dot in the middle.

That\'s the way I do it, you shouldn\'t have to do many touch ups in the flesh colour as long as you\'re careful when doing the white line.
I\'ve just finished doing 24 men of gondor withe eyes painted, it\'s not that difficult, but I would agree that it is more difficult than on Warhammer figs, due to the smaller size
 

SJB

New member
I don\'t feel eyes have to be painted if a figure looks fine without them.

Two cases in point -

http://www.coolminiornot.com/index.php?id=32802

My LOTR Golden Demon winner from last year. Eyes not painted. Why? Because on realistically styled figures, I find that you can get a more natural effect without eyes.

http://www.coolminiornot.com/index.php?id=32063

My Bronze Demon winner from last year\'s UK Golden Demon. And in the most contested category. And no eyes painted (or eye in this case). Again, it worked better for the figure to be painted that way.

Well, that\'s two demon winners with eyes not painted beyond a dark brown line. I think that\'s evidence enough that not painting eyes is not necessarily a sign that things are not professional.

Steve Buddle
 

Mengu

New member
On Sam and Frodo, I first did the eyes. Any mess can be cleaned up at later stages this way. I did Gollum\'s eyes after I did his face. They were larger.

http://www.coolminiornot.com/?id=35905

But if you are painting dozens of goblins, you don\'t really need to pay that close attention.
 
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