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While the “tongue consortium” on this guy was crying out for some sort of airbrushed transition showcase, I wanted something I could knock out while visiting with friends. So, with a limited palette, terrible lighting, more than a few drinks, and great company, I managed to bang this creature feature out… I finished the base after getting home, so I got a few little ink blasts of purple to give the dark stone a little ambiance.

Originally I was going to paint this figure by Nordlys Miniatures with the more simple goal of "a man telling ghost stories around a campfire". I primed the figure with that intent (upside down zenithal). But then the invasion began, and the character's story changed. The color scene became one mimicking the Ukrainian flag, both to tell the story and honor their determination. The man now stands in front of a fire, ignited in his homeland as he stands in the aftermath of destruction. He has taken up arms, despite not having been a trained soldier before. He watches the night skyline as it briefly glows while bombs drop, but the illumination has a glint of hope as he sees the Ghost of Kyiv fly to avenge the country. He will someday tell his ghost story around a campfire in the future, of what he has seen, never to let it be forgotten. Kimera's Ultramarine Blue, Warm Yellow, Diarylide Yellow, and Carbon Black are among the most prominent paints on the piece, in conjunction with some from ProAcryl, Reaper, and Scale 75. Reaper's Midnight Blue, Corporeal Shadow, and Nightshade Purple form the basis for the darker blue regions and the shadows. Muddy Soil was the foundation for the eyebrows. Foggy Gray was the base for the whites of the eyes. ProAcryl's Transparent White and Transparent Orange are used heavily for the reflection, and amplifying highlights and deepening yellow areas. Bold Titanium White was the white of choice for opaques. Tan Flesh and Shadow Flesh were used for underlying skin tones. Scale 75's SC Tesla Blue and Deep Blue were used for the iris colors. I will be putting the figure up for charity auction in the near future via Facebook, on a Polish nerd-dom charity auction page. Please see my FB page if you are interested in that. Hoping mentioning this doesn't set off too many forums flags - good cause, not for profit, not yet listed... will edit post if folks want me to remove this.

So I'm working on a really small figure a newish Tom Meier Halfling Druid from DarkSword Miniatures. I painted the eyes and was kind of satisfied with them but one seems to be bigger than the other, which means I think I painted the black first outside of the target eye that was sculpted. One eye is okay the other one it too big: so when we get really close to the figure I can see how uneven she is, but she is really, really small: So my first general question is, would this be enough to frustrate somebody to repaint? So with this in mind, the "good" news is I just went from a nice pair of magnifying nerd goggles that go up to around 2.5 to some other ones that I have sitting around that are 3.5 x magnification. So I almost feel I have a good enough view of the eyes to edit it a little bit. I'm just wondering if it's all worth it? Any suggestions?

My son's DM wanted a purple beholder with red eyes.

I painted an eyebeast for the D&D Painting class I was teaching One of the techniques we were working on was blending so I wanted to make sure that I chose colors that the techniques would show well hence the bright green and pink. The class was fun and everyone's eyebeasts turned out great!

(apologies for large sections of text- I like trying to explain what I'm thinking as I'm going, but I promise it will have lots of pictures!) Right, so I need to get started on a few new projects and one of the things folks expressed an interest in after reapercon was busts. I went and bought this bust: …planning to see if I could use it for a class. And when it came, I realized it was a bit larger than I expected, even with the description. Also, the mold removal didn’t seem to go very well for the sender, so I wasn’t as happy with it as I might have been. However, I got to thinking I could use it for a WIP at least, and that that might be more helpful to start with anyway. I still might do a class, but the bust called to me and I had an idea and it ate away at my resolve… so here it is. The plan is to make her into Mother Nature. Originally I’d planned to do a bunch of the sculpting first, but I felt like painting. I’ll get the face mostly done, then do the sculpting and finish painting. She’ll have a tree growing out of her shoulder, a bunch of leaves and flowers in her hair and probably some other natural and unnatural things to make the whole a more interesting story. I may attach a few animal companions as well. Right. When I decided on the theme, I knew I’d need green skin. One important thing to think about when it comes to skin is that our brains are hardwired to recognize varying shades of tan, ocher, rust, etc as skinlike. The more saturated and intense the color, the less we believe its skin. So no matter what color I want the skin to look like, I need to chose a softer more desaturated color. Green yes, but it has to be a nice quiet and pleasant green. I went to my stash of greens, took a few deep breaths and asked myself why I had so many greens, and proceeded to pick the warmest ones. I played around with a few of them on paper. I find when working with colors I haven’t before, if I make a few washes on watercolor paper, I can see how they thin, how transparent they are and how they play with each other. See how the pthalo looks cooler compared especially to the viper green? I wanted to compare and knew that one was cool. I can tolerate the peacock even though its on the cooler side comparatively, You can see here the ones I was looking at. I ended up going with these: I added the fair skin mainly because it adds more warmth to the whole. Alone, the green will end up looking too weird, but adding a touch of flesh makes a difference- I'll explain with pics in a bit. The peacock green is still fairly cool. I couldn't find a really warm dark green. But I can glaze the viper over it in places to warm it up. Next, I slathered some paint on the bust to get a sense of how the colors look. Two things. I must decide early on where my light source will be. For a bust, this is probably even more important than a smaller mini, because there’s so much surface area to work with. I have to add enough interest to keep my viewer’s eye moving. Since the bust is looking down and to the viewer’s right, I’ll make the light source come from the top left. Second thing, I need a model to help me place all of my highlights and shadows appropriately on the face. You know how the phone/digital camera has that cool “face recognition” thing these days? (…showing my age…) We people have the same thing. When we look at a face we expect to see certain familiar features. At 28 mm scale, there’s not much space to work in, but at the bust scale, if I don’t paint the highlights and shadows in a familiar fashion, it’ll look weird. What's with the Picasso? Ah hah! The face is made up of a bunch of planes and mounds and shapes that flow in to each other. When we’re babies, the division between the shapes is less defined. Our baby fat fills in all the gaps. As we age, we can start to see the skeleton behind the flesh. When painting a bust, I make a choice (often based on the sculpture itself) about how old or young I want the figure to be. In this case, I’d like mother nature to have fairly smooth features, but maybe a few lines to make her matronly. I’ll get to that. But whenever you choose to paint a bust, think about things like that ahead of time and it will make the process smoother. Cubism among many other things breaks down the human into basic geometric shapes. Learning what those shapes are will help you build up a basic volume in each area. Once you have an idea where each of the highlights go in each basic shape, the rest is all blending. But if the bulges don't match the anatomy, it will seem off. If that makes sense. This was a hard concept for me to pick up at first. Ok, I generally choose a model for my bust. In this case, I chose Scarlett Johansson. She has lovely clear skin. Now, using her, I can see in great detail with a larger blown-up pic where highlights tend to live and where shadows tend to fall. See how her cheek are sort of square or maybe triangular? The forehead and chin are circles? I grab a variety of pics from hollywood, because I can zoom in and see where all the little fiddly bits go around the eye and whatnot. Having a high resolution photo is helpful as a map to follow. here's me debating gaze direction. and playing with the eye. I've sketched in the basic parts. I did some blending and smoothing. I put this one in to show the way the bust sits on the table. So the direction of gaze makes a bit more sense in context. It's hard to make eyes look directly ahead and make them match up, especially with this sculpt because one eye is sculpted larger than the other. It's a lot easier to have an off center gaze. I promise to come back to the eyes, but when I first start, I bounce around and let things dry while working on other areas. So it progresses more quickly. I did some smoothing on the skin and cleaned up the eyes, chose where I wanted a few more highlights on the cheeks. Worked on the lips. See how the top lip is dark and the bottom lighter? That has to do with the anatomy of the face. the bottom one bulges out and the top slants back and doesn't catch the light. Also, just to give you a sense of scale, here's another bust and sir forescale: She's ginormous. So, it stands to reason I have to put more detail into her features and work harder on the blending to make it smooth. That is one of the tricks with larger minis. You have to blend the heck out of it or it won't look like skin. Ok, it did more work on the eyes. I should explain eyes at this point... My trust internet model! Take a look at the eye and see where all of the highlights a shadows fall. This is based on the anatomy underneath. The eye is a big oblong ball-like shape. The lids cover this, which means they bulge out towards us. Generally, that means they catch light at their outermost part, and are shaded below. Take a look at the corner on the left of the eye. That’s the tear duct. Adding that to a bust really adds a sense of realism to the painting. Adding the lashes and the iris lines will tuck in little details to make it more like a real eye. The sclera (white) of the eye is actually a more blueish in color, though in someone with liver issues it can look yellowish. I save pure white for the reflection so it’s the brightest spot and can still be differentiated from the scelera. Pure white in the sclera means we won’t get the full impact of the highlight and also pure white is colder. see the palette here: the two whites near the middle are linen and pure I’m using linen because it has a hint of yellow in it and I want the skin to live on the warmer side. Also, see how the highlight on the eye isn’t directly over the pupil, but more over the iris? The eyes is constantly wet with our tear ducts, so it should always look shiny- that highlight spot helps sell the wet effect, just like light on a wet road or a metal sword edge ok- must work. more soon! I'll probably edit this post and add a bunch more explanation and details, I just want to post in case the computer tries to eat it!

So I am working on a batch of vampires. Up until now I have generally painted vampire eyes either like regular eyes, but red or kind of glowy red-gold. I felt like I wanted to try some other options. So I gessoed a piece of bristol board and painted a patch of grey on it (I paint vampire skin grey and white) and added some black blodges to represent eye sockets. From the centimeter scale, you can see that these are way bigger than mini eyes. That is because I am not a masochist where practice is concerned. Then I laid in some eye shapes in pale grey (the whites of eyes are pale grey in general, not pure white). You can see a column of them still unplayed-with, third from the left. I played around with types of preternatural eyes, using a limited palette of Golden Matte Fluid Acrylics: Titanium White, Carbon Black, Red Oxide, Yellow Ochre, Hansa Yellow Opaque, and a very limited amount of Quinacridone Magenta. Some of the eyes are based on leopard eyes and gorilla eyes. This way one can test eyes on a large scale before committing to figures.

Since I can't for the life of me get the seam lines and fuzzies off my Bones Succubus, thought I would use it to practice eye painting since I've only painted one mini so far. Here is my attempt from last night. Deck tan for whites, black brown for liner. Nevermind the Skin painting, was just for cutting in the liner. I used red oil paint on a pin to make the iris. I think it turned out great, but seems to me there has to be a way to cheat at this. The anxiety and anguish of trying over and over and having ruined it at various steps is frustrating. This one took me 3 tries. Anyone tried using liquid watercolors for dotting the eye? seems like if you messed it up it would easily wipe off to try again. I assume I could seal it with airbrushed varnish when done. maybe use a tiny mask to cover the whites so both sides could match, etc? really fishing here....

Hi All, So for those that pay the least bit of attention to what I paint, you may have noticed that I paint mostly Ral Partha figures, which is a brand I really do enjoy quite a lot. I've been painting figures for their online catalogue for a number of years, and I just recently tried my hand at my first little tutorial, which was posted over at their site. If you are at all curious, you could find it here: http://www.ralpartha.com/index.php/blog/119-painting-guide-eyes-and-faces It is by no means the end-all, be-all of painting eyes, but just shows the way I typically approach painting eyes with four recent examples of figures that I've done. I think it almost feels like a WIP for four different figures. So anyways, have a look, hope you enjoy it, and hopefully somebody somewhere can get a little bit of eye-painting inspiration!

I started this figure for my friends celebrating this month. I have had the figure for many years, and the one I have isn't the best cast, but she'll be beautiful. Plan is to have brown outer dress, darkish hair, and rainbow wings. Tried a new eyes technique; I mixed Schubert's method with the Bette Davis method. DKS's guide has the eyes after shading up the face, and the Bette Davis ones are at the start, then cover the edges. I used DKS at the start instead of the end, so I can still meet the eyeliner as I fill in the face.

http://figurementors.com/method-for-painting-eyes-on-busts-and-smaller-scales The amazing and generous David Powell (bailey03 on this forum) is back with another tutorial to help us all be just a bit more awesome! Great read, very close to the method I used for my Nocturna bust last year. https://cashwiley.com/2015/12/27/scottish-highlander/

Hey all! I posted a few days ago about being new and now I'm back to painting my fourth figure. I tried tackling my biggest issue, which was eyes. And honestly i was kind of happy with the product until i took the picture for this thread and now i hate the eyes :p. I think I'll just leave them as is to save me my sanity. But here's my progress as of now. Ideally I'd like to get the figure done in one sitting but I got out of work late and spent almost two hours on just the face so that's probably not happening. I'll keep painting and post what I've completed whenever I give up for the night.

So always have fun with eyes (not) and anyway, I'm wondering how, or if, I would go about adapting the lining the eye technique for a dark skin tone? Or if anyone has any advice on painting eyes with dark skin tone, that'd be awesome too! I'm terrible with eyes anyway so all the help I can get is awesome thanks :D

This was supposed to be a quick tabletop paint. The eyes and teeth are so numerous that this is a bit of a pain. Not to be taken lightly. Has anyone separated the mini to paint it in pieces and then re-glued it? It would probably be easier. There were places I couldn't get to at all. I'm pretty happy with how gooey and alien this turned out. I wanted to do the eyes in full black (I did blue liner instead) and something about the lack of pupils really works for me. I had real problems painting over the pink at some points. For whatever reason it was on pretty thick. You can see a few of the teeth have bits of flesh mixed in. It works ok, but I would've preferred getting rid of it. In my haste to finish this up, I forgot to paint the insides of the mouth with Burgundy Wine (something I'd decided on in the beginning). I'm real happy with the teeth (where not overly-pink) I went from oiled leather up to leather white (mostly in the VGC bone white). I think they look suitably gross. The skeleton inside was difficult to reach and really And the flaws - the worst mold lines I've ever left on a mini (and I leave most of them on) and a few bald patches where I probably rubbed off/ prevented paint from sticking with my grimy hands. This is a great mini though, and freaks people out even in a quick job. And now the pictures. Oh and the flesh was a mix of VGC Warlord Purple, Old West Rose, Pale Flesh and Burgundy Wine.

I hate eyes on miniatures. There...I got it off my chest. I'm not bad at painting eyes. Some of the FAQ's on these boards are top-notch concerning the subject. And when I see what the pro's can do, the first thing I think is "Wow, what talent. Those are amazing peepers." Which is usually followed by "And I don't like them." Maybe it's because they look too cartoony. Maybe it's the scale. Maybe it's the flat or amorphous features around the face, or the size limitations, or maybe (most probably) my brain is broken. But I seem to gravitate toward implied eyes with shading, glasses, goggles, and low eye-hiding helmets. Don't get me wrong-- some mini's I've seen absolutely look better with eyes. But for your standard soldier or wizard, they look goofy to me. This is probably just me. Anyway, thought I'd bring it up and see if anyone feels the same, and if they approach mini-painting differenly because of it.

I'd posted this comment under one of my current WIP's, but figured it would be better served here: Eyes! Brush or Sakura Pigma Micron Pens? I've been experimenting with attempting colored irises, but I'm not sure that I still have (or at least haven't developed) the manual dexterity to pull them off. I'm 37, so I'm not sure if that's still an option or not. I think I'm okay with Jazzy's Liriel, but with Vic, her eyes are so tiny I'm going to have to suffice with the standard Walnut eyes. I've heard some people use Microns, so I'm curious about that option... So, who uses brushes, who uses microns and why? Go!

I used to paint figures as a teenager, and then took a ten year hiatus. I've started painting again, and I'm much better at it now then I was then. However, I never did get the knack for painting eyes. Right now white with a spot of black is about where I'm at. It works ok with male figures, but when it comes to female figures it leaves much to be desired. (one mistroke and you have a transvestite) I was wondering if anyone has any tips. Starting with, how do you paint something that is almost microscopic, so well. What kind of brush do you use. A lot of times, I'll get my brush where I want it, but no paint will come off the brush, because you can't really apply any pressure, and you can't really have your brush soaked in paint. I know the (for instance) Dark blue dot, followed by a light blue dot, followed by a black dot, followed by a white dot. But I don't have a clue how you pull that off when you can barely get one dot on there without screwing up the whole face. Also need help with applying makeup effects. I'm tired of my ladies looking butch, or lazy. They're not all natural beauties. They need some makeup. Do i need a magnifying glass or something and a special brush?