Tutorial on painting S. Garrity\'s eyes?

[Kamui K]

Hey guys. I\'ve seen plenty of tuturials on painting eyes, but does anyone have a tuturial for painting Sandra Garrity\'s (from Reaper) sculpted eyes? Her little dotted pupils often confuses me and I end up messing up the face on repaints cause of it. Do most ppl use those dots as black pupils and just enlarge the eyes all around it? I\'ve tryed adding a dot within those sculpted pupils and they don\'t seem to look right. Were they meant to be dotted?
Any info would be appreciated.

 

[Chrispy]

This happens in drawing eyes, too. If you dot an eye, it lookes like mini is afraid or staring because the in real life the pupil is between eyelids and people seldom open their eyes up enough that you could see all of it. I like to do eyes before the rest of the face, that way I can screw up as much as I want without messing with anything else. I first start with a dark color or ink wash and use a micro pen or my smallest brush to dot the eyes. if they look off, I paint white over them when the ink/aint has set up.

Other things such as orcs and dragons have different eyes, so this is just the basic method, but i hope it helps!

 

[mouse]

Doing eyes...

My way of doing it is...

(1) I always cut the outline of the eye first. I realise that the eye is not well defined to be viewed on a 25mm/28mm/30mm scale. There\'s also another reason.

(2) Then I paint the iris of the eye. (either use GW bleached bone, or GW bleached bone with 1/4 Tentacle pink to give it a slightly red tinge. Use other corresponding paint if necessary but never use white...I learned it the hard way). Dilute the first layer.

(3) Drop a drop (?) of ink (either chestnut brown, flesh wash or watered down GW dwarf flesh) onto the recesses whereby you cut the eye. Use a dry brush to spread it around the eye.

(4) Before it dries, paint two moon crescents for the pupil and fill up the gap inbetween the crescents (if no gap...then forget about filling it ). I always ensure that the pupil is thick enough so that it sort of protrudes out as compared to the iris. This is important as you don\'t want to over paint onto the pupil.

(5) Then paint the iris again.

(6) Then using a darker shade of your flesh tone, paint the upper border of the eye - that\'s for the eye lid. It doesn\'t matter if it overlaps the iris and the pupil. In real life, you don\'t usually see a totally round pupil! Of course, it is slightly covered by the eye lid (take a look a photographs of real people)

There you have it....my way of painting the eye.

PS: I personally felt the eye is important cos it determines how \"alive\" your mini is.

PPS: I haven\'t master (although I failed many times) the ability to create catchlight in the pupil. THat\'s very IMPORTANT!!! In photography, without the catchlight, the person in the photography is lifeless.

PPPS: Although I cheat by using a semi-gloss varnish on the eye to give it a watery effect. That\'s what our eyes are like, always covered with a sheen of moisture (tear?)

Hope this helps.

 

[vincegamer]

terminology

I need some help understanding this and I think it\'s the terms. There seems to be confusion I have read elsewhere as well.

Pupil - the black hole/circle in the center of the eye. It gets bigger in the dark and smaller in bright light.

Iris - the colored circle around the pupil. It\'s outer diameter always stays the same but this is what changes thickness to make the pupil smaller or larger.

White - the rest of the eye. It\'s not really white, more off-white with tiny red threads (veins) running through it.

Do people actually paing PUPILS???
I haven\'t bothered 1 because it\'s so darn small no one would see it, and 2 because it would be near impossible to get it exactly in the center of the eye.
But I\'ve seen lots of people talk about painting the pupil and it baffles me.

 

[GarnetJubilee]

I paint the eye after I\'m finished because it is so delicate and I\'d be really upset if I made the eyes perfect and then accidently hit it with the flesh color while I was doing the rest of it! <G>

I start by swiping it with a thin layer of white. I then pick my eye color (preferrably dark) and try to splot it somewhere near the center of the eye. I try to \"match\" the off-centerness of the first one to the second one, so at least the mini looks like she\'s looking the right way. Sometimes you\'ll have to fix the white on the corners a bit (I don\'t worry about the white getting a bit out of the \"lines,\" \'cause it\'s an easy color to paint over and if you\'re thinning the paints it shouldn\'t be too noticeable unless you do it 100000 times).

After I\'m satisfied with the eye, I very carefully swipe some of whatever I used for the darker parts of the skin under and above the eye.

I personally wouldn\'t bother trying to either paint a pupil or catchlight, because minis are meant to be viewed from a distance, and I think that kind of detail is going to be lost and it will just cause headache and frusteration. Maybe if I were using micron pens.. but that feels like cheating somehow...

 

[Errex]

Well, micron pens are just tools. I don\'t use them, but I don\'t think people who use them cheat. Same with the transfers. Some like them, some don\'t. Some really know how to apply them to the most tricky surfaces, while others can do an awesome freehand job.

I do eyes last too. It is the moment you \"breath\" life into a mini. Kinda like a ritual thing to me.

 

[Mengu]

Back to the original question, to paint SG\'s and DM\'s eyes (Dennis Mize uses a similar technique when sculpting eyes), I don\'t stay within the sculpted pupil, I usually paint down underneath it and up above it. However the side borders do provide a good template, so I don\'t go over those. I don\'t paint the iris and pupil separately, more often than not i use jkust a black dot. I seem to do it more comfortably with a brush, than a micro pen.