painting space marine eyes and faces

[Sgt.Sangha]

hey guys im painting my sargents and captains and all my other helmless marines and i dont know how to paint the eyes properly. are there any techniques you guys use that have good results?

[Rider-75]

i fill the eye sockets with a dark, almost black wash. then paint a white band into each eye. then a black dot in the middle do the bottom of the dot is touching the bottom of the white.

 

if you just centre the black dot, it looks too staring.

 

there is/was a face painting guide article on the GW website.

[Sgt.Sangha]

thanks for the advice and ill look at the gw website as well

[Hemal]

I would really look at as many sources on painting miniatures as possible. I also wouldn't paint eyes in white -it looks too stark TBH for a homicidal zealot...

 

Bleached bone + white is great as an alterantive to give the appearance of some shading on the eyeball. Paint this into the eye socket after washing the eye socket in a deep colour like really thinned down scorched brown or ogryn flesh wash, and then add a line above the eye to provide illusion of an eyelid, and dot in the iris, as stated make it a little bigger to avoid the appearance of the eyes being pulled open.. the iris should touch the top line and the bottom of the eyeball.

 

It takes a lot of practice, maybe use a few spare heads stuck to say a flying base or something similar as an experiment?

[Obliterator]

If you're not too confident at painting thin lines, an option is to paint the eyes first, and then frame them in by basecoating and painting the rest of the face. This would of course only work if you're not going to apply a wash over the face, as that would obviously flood the eyes again.

[Sgt.Sangha]

excellent ideas brothers, i really like the sound of the last one

[hmk17]

Great tutorial here. Helped me step up my game.

 

http://www.reapermini.com/TheCraft/12