How to paint PA lenses

[Dammish]

So I will start this off by admitting that I am rather new to modeling. Just "finished" painting my first 1000 point army of codex marines and decided to move on to Imperial Fists as my next challenge. Lots of fun obstacles to overcome with this color scheme. I was using very dark colors on my previous project that forgave my lack of experience highlighting and base-coating, but that yellow is one tough customer. Having to learn all kinds of new tricks just to make the armor look decent.

 

Anyway, I wanted to get some opinions from people on how you do lenses on PA helmets. Almost all my guys are helmeted except my sergeant and captain so it would be good to really know what I am doing here. The two schools of thought I am seeing online are to base coat with a darker version of the color you plan to use (dark angels green for goblin green lenses, for example) and then do either 1: a perfect circle to gesture in the marine's line of sight or 2: a more evenly spread second coat to add definition to the lens itself. After that, wash the whole thing down with an ink to get your blend and gesture in the depth. What do you experienced painters prefer to do and why? Also, for a brighter lens color like blood red, could I get away with doing just a peck of skull white for lens flare?

 

On a separate note, I am debating what detail color to use on their shoulder pads and chest emblems. My first thought was to use the more somber black and codex gray, but this muted the yellow too much for my taste and made the marines look sort of sickly. Red accents have a lot of appeal, and I am using Ogryn flesh ink for the joint and seam detail so the effect is passable. But do you think, and maybe I am just color-blind here, but could a turquoise accent work for a more mustardy yellow? Would I have to fluff them up as another surrogate chapter using IF geneseed or no?

[UltraRich]

Someone else on here posted this link and I found it a great tutorial

 

Click here

[winterdyne]

I never use washes or attempt to blend on small lenses - it's more trouble than its worth.

 

I also like to basecoat by airbrush, so a certain amount of neatness is required - though edge highlighting by hand hides any mistakes pretty well.

 

Standard technique is 5 colours; black, dark base, mid base, caustic and spot (usually pure white).

 

First black the entire 'eye' or lens area. Then carefully paint a dark shade in. Paint about 2/3 of it the mid base colour, and a fine line of the caustic (highlight) colour where the tear duct is (by the nose and along the bottom a bit). Finally with a very good point brush dot the white in the opposite corner.

 

Here are my basic recipes in dark, mid, and caustic.

 

Mid Red: Mechrite Red, Blood Red, Dwarf Flesh

Dark Red: Dark flesh, mechrite red, blood red.

Mid Green: DA green, snot green, goblin green.

Yellow: Khemri brown, golden yellow, bleached bone.

Blue-white: Shadow grey, 50-50 Shadow Grey / Space Wolf Grey, Space Wolf Grey

[Dammish]

Well that more than settles me for this one guys. Thanks for your help and especially thank you winterdyne for your color load-outs, this will help a lot! I am book-marking that tutorial ultrarich, thanks for the plug!

[hmk17]

To add to this...

 

use complementing colors on the lenses. Really makes the paint scheme pop.

 

Red armor - green lenses

blue, purple - yellow

grey, black, green - red

white, yellow - red or blue

[Wicksy]

For my blood angels assault marines, i went with blue lenses. I painted them by base coating the lens enchanted blue. I then mixed a little black to darken it then painted the back of the lens. i then used ice blue at the front of the lens. Then with a fine point, i drew an outline of 50:50 ice blue, white along the front toward the bottom of the lens. A white do at the rear of the eye completes the look. Blending is nigh on impossible but keep your paints thin and flowing nicely and the lenses will look great.