hi guys
hte problem i have is i cant paint the eyes in 135 scale figures. what do u guys do ??? leave them blank or just do the best u can ??
i dont want my model vehicles to be crewless but niether do i want them to be spoiled by bad figure panting is there a easy where???. im not intrested in show standard just decent figures
cheers
dave

The key is a steady hand and a fine brush, OOO or smaller. The method I use is a cross pattern. First, I paint a thin horizontal line in white or off-white across the eyes. Next, I paint a thin vertictal line, either brown or dark blue, etc. through the white line for the iris. Lastly, go backwith your flesh color and shape the eyes to thin oval slits. Good luck.

Gday Dave
Aww man, there are a hundred and three ways of finishing eyes...
It can depend on the detail of the figure, as they can vary from injection plastic figures having slitted eyes lacking in detail, to resin heads that have eyeball and eyelid details...
For the former, you could just add a dark horizontal line of thinned paint to give the impression of squinting eyes. There is nothing worse than thinking you can make these type of eyes stand out by adding pure white for to the eyeball, and then a dot of black for the iris in the middle... The result is a Rodney Dangerfield look, which is possibly not the look you're after... You can add an iris of the colour of choice, but the trick here is to frame the eyeball by adding a thin line for the top eyelid, but not in black; say brown shades... Looking at a real eye, the iris generally touches the edge of the white eyeball (except when startled and wide eyed...) so therefore would touch the top line you have added.
If you wish to go the more detailed option for say a hornet head, then do not use pure white, but a just lighter than flesh colour. (Caucasian flesh that is...) You can frame the eye again with a brown line... Helps to do these first, so you can paint in the eye with flesh colour later to get the right shape.
These are pretty simple ways, and I haven't painted eyes since Jesus was a lad, so therefore you may get some btter ideas surfacing. Do a search of the network; you'll be sure to bring up some good how-tos...
Cheers
Brad

I would pile on and tell you Archer makes a set of "eye" decals. I have them and I am going to experiemnt with a Verlinden American tanker figure tonight. Has anyone ever used them before?
thanks
DJ

DJ--I got the Archer dry-transfer eyes a couple of months back but was disappointed with the quality of the 1/35 scale ones. Maybe it was just my copy, but they looked very pixelated. Post pictures of your finished tanker so that we can see how they end up looking. I have to say that the concept is very appealing--painting eyes is pretty tough!

I had always found the eyes the hardest to get looking right. Just like everything else, practice, practice, practice.

The cross pattern approach as suggested by Gino is the simpler way.
Other tips. If you are right-handed paint first the left eye. The left eye is more difficult because the nose interfere when you paint the eye opposed to your able hand. In doing so you can position more precisely the right eye in reference to the left one. This way is easier to avoid squinting eyes. Of course if you are left-handed do it the opposite way.
You can also use synthetic brushes to paint the pupils. Kolinsky sable brushes are generally speaking much better for figure/detail painting but they are not so good to make dots or rounded shapes because the hair is softer than artificial fibres and tend to make fine lines.
And don´t forget to firmly lean your arms on the table! By the way, I remember that some people use a heap of plasticine to rest the figure in the necessary position and let free the non-able hand to hold the able one and get an extremily steady hand.

I hope you can understand my poor english.
Regards.

I've been using a #2 Kolinski brush with a very fine point in the last several figures I've done and this has worked better than any of the fine, up to 18/0, brushes, I got that tip from a seminar by Marion and Alan Ball. At first, I didn't believe it, but it works. Take a look at the mounted Crow and SItting Bull in my gallery.
What I do is paint the face the base flesh color. I then lay in a bit of light flesh from Vallejo. Onto this I put my iris of blue or brown covering 1/2 to 2/3 of the iris. I check the alignment by lookoing at the face in a mirror, much like your barber/stylist looks at your mirror reflection for most of your haircut. When the alignment is correct, I shape the eye with base flash again, then proceed to shade and highlight.
I saw Archer eye decals at the 2002 Nationals at VA Beach. They invariably looked like doll eyes.

The cross method works for me - when I have the guts - it's taken me a while to get the fleshtones right, so the thought of having to touch up once the eyes have been done was unappealing! But, i've recently struck on a recipe for caucasian fleshtone which works every time... Using a mix of Vallejo light skintone (70928) and Model air Sandy Brown (71034) gets a spot-on flesh base every time, more sandy brown = more suntan... then (and you barely need to thin it) use neat sandy brown as a wash for all the creases and crevases in the face... Eyes can go in first or after the flesh base and be touched up before the wash... but as has been mentioned, use the light skintone NOT white for the eyeballs... mix a tiny bit of Vallejo Burnt Cadmium red (814) into the base fleshtone and use for lips and upper eyelids, and more light flesh for the bridge of the nose...

I imagine those archer eyes will be a doddle to position

Richard

Hi There,

Get yourself a head magnifier (think thats what they are called ) this will allow you to actually look at the eye closer without loss of depth perception.

I generally paint the eye as mentioned earlier not white but an off colour of the actual eye for example blue eyes will have a light white, brown flesh colour etc. The other thing to remember for 1/35th the eye colour will cover most of the eye.

Mark Bannerman will snap a toothpick and the shards he uses to put in the eye colour it works very well. I find it allows me to control the paint and fill in pretty well what I need. He may even have an article on Missing Lynx.

I also find depending on the figure a single dark brown dot for the eye works as well. If the face is painted well and sometimes the eye doesnt require the full detail job especially if they are squinting.

Cheers

Ray

I think this is one of those subjects where there is no definitive way to do it. I always use a basic flesh colour lightened with white for the eye and then use a sharpened cocktail stick for the eyeball. Then I'll give the face a wash of nearly transparent reddish brown. I find that this settles into the creases on the face and accentuates them without going over the top with highlighting and lowlighting. I find that it gives that grubby in combat look effectively. Some will argue against my simplistic approach but to me its what you feel comfortable with and what works. Experiment with all the techniques until you find one that you're happy with