I want to share something for beginning or early painters to see if this will help them out. I see a lot of sites with painting tips on faces and of all things doing eyes for 15-25mm figures. And in most cases all the figures represented have these big bulging eyeballs of white, then blue, green, brown??
Let's think about the scale of the figure. If you were looking at a person from a distance equivalent to the size of the figure away from you in scale, could you tell what color their eyes are? I will bet my left boot you can not. I have painted for years and very rarely will I paint eyes for a figure. They always look cartoonish in my opinion. Yes, large scale figures do require attention to the eye, but for 15-30mm in most cases you can get a way without painting them.
Here is what I do instead, I paint with a dark, almost black or brown color for the face making sure it gets into all the lines and eyesockets. Then I paint over with a skin tone. I then go over it with a paint wash of a skin tone ink and let it seep into the depressions. Then when dry, I dry brush very lightly over the skin with a lighter skin tone paint, paying attention to cheeks, the forehead and nose.
By doing this if you are carefull you will see all the lines on the face and the eyes will seem shaded just like they do for a person in the distance.
I get a lot of people that shake their head at this when I bring this up but the results speak for themselves. But some people like to have the eyes visable on a figure. Hey, what ever works for you. This is a fast way to paint a face for armies that will look good. But to
see a good clear example of how they can look check my gallery section on my website. Note the example listed as 25mm Imperial Romans, RAFM manufacture. No eyeballs painted but the figures still look good.
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Chris Brantley: As I have experimented over the years, I have found that I like to paint the eyes on 15mm horses (a small dash of white with a smaller dot of black, usually done with a permanent ink pen). I don't bother painting eyes on 15mm figures, although I've found that putting in the eyebrows (usually with ink pen) can really make the face pop out, especially for miniatures that have beards or facial hair.
Mike Manning: Though hardly an equine expert, when I look at horses I try to do so with an eye (pardon the pun) to how to paint them. My observation is that, unless startled, you don't see the whites of a horse's eye. I use a black undercoat when painting horses and when I paint the horse colour, usually brown, over top I purposely avoid the eyes so that the dark pupil shows.
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Last Updated: Dec. 27, 2001
Comments, questions and additions welcome. Send them to Chris Brantley at brant@erols.com.