"Do you paint eyes?" Topic

I occasionally do on special figures, like LotR characters. A short line of white, a black dot, paint around the edges with flesh colour, then a brown wash.

At that point you can hardly see that I have painted them. Perfect !

I absolutely detest eyes that are "as large as saucers" to quote from the fairy tale, which I have often seen.

I do as long as there is a place to actually paint them. Figures that just have a vague or blank spot for the eyes just get a dot.

Not the whites, just a small black line/dot.

Have done on 28mm, but used to spend too much time redoing them to avoid the Marty Feldman look. Still make the attempt if it's a figure forvthe cabinet rather than the gaming table.
Most of my armies now are 10mm or 15mm and painting eyes would be one more push towards madness.
I find that " Magic Wash" gives a perfectly acceptable look for eyes viewed using the " 3 feet rule"

Assuming a 28mm fig is actually 1.8m in real life they are about 1/64 scale. From wiki

"The normal pupil size in adults varies from 2 to 4 mm in diameter in bright light to 4 to 8 mm in the dark."

So take 4mm as a rough guide then the figure pupil diameter is 0.0625 mm (0.00246 inch or 2 1/2 Thou). Not sure anybody is easily going to paint a realistic pupil.

Same source

"The average corneal diameter was 11.71 +/- 0.42 mm. The average corneal diameter was 11.77 +/- 0.37 mm in males compared with 11.64 +/- 0.47 mm in females. The resulting normal ranges were 11.04 to 12.50 for males and 10.70 to 12.58 mm for females."

So 12mm at 1/64 is 0.1875mm or a bit less than 8 THOU that does look possible with effort.

For my 1/144 it would be 0.0833 millimeters or about 3 thou.

Given that my 1/144 3D sculpts need 0.4mm to make a panel line show up, less than this and it can't be seen at any sensible distance it's pointless below 1/72 if you have a sensible figure.

Circus freaks, why bother they are so out of scale they can never be real representations so no point trying to make a silk purse out of a sows ear.

not anything 25mm or smaller

I'm completely talentless so I don't paint. But I have a nice chap who paints my 28mm Napoleonics and he paints eyes. They look great; those without eyes look weird.

Yep, on every 28mm or larger figure I paint.

No. I'm a pretty good painter. Eyes are very difficult even when using pen and ink. They usually don't look natural and the effort is not worth it. Diminishing returns.

Not on anything smaller than 2mm… wait a minute… what day is today?

No!

I used to even on one ill-conceived occasion on 15mm figures and often making sure units had an appropriate ratio of Brown/Blue/Green eyes. These days I use a wash into the recesses as I think it actually looks better.

I spent years trying to master eye and eventually did master it!
Someone made the sujestion that a dark line would be sufficient I gave it a go and liked it more.
So I went back and retrospectively blacked out allmost all the painted eye's.

For those who don't paint eyes, how do you refight the Battle of Bunker Hill?🤔

I use fleshwash and let the shadow encompass the eyeslits in my 25/28 mm figures.Soldiers naturally squint…the old days of grenadier minis pop-eyed elves is long gone.

1/72. No.

20mm & 25mm figures yes, use to on 15mm figures until I got older because of eyesight.

Not unless I want a major migraine!

I look at people such as the Perry twins and how they paints theirs. I think a lot at painted on commission by others, but apart from senior officers sometimes the majority don't have eyes painted, so I think if that is good enough for them it's good enough for me too, so I follow suite.

I paint them in 15mm but use no white. Dark brown and black for eyebrow and pupil with adjustments done with light flesh color.

That's a really impressive paint job!

The only miniatures I've ever painted with visible whites of the eyes were 1/1200 ancient galleys.

My human figures from 28mm on down don't usually get anything but eye socket shading.

Horses might get a black dot, if the eye is sculpted well enough.

Way back yonder in the days of monogram 1/32 armour the professional painters said soldiers squint,a dark slit is fine.

6mm; no eyes.

Never

Only when I go to scratch my nose while forgetting that I have a paint brush in my hand.