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Thursday, July 04, 2024

Theda Lane

What started as yet another attempt to paint 28mm scale eyes has turned into sunglasses once again. Ah well, at least there's a hint of lip colour this time. 

Like Tim Chan, Theda Lane is one of the Student Investigators from Pulp Figures. What strange mystery is she about to solve? 
 

2 comments:

Jeff Shyluk said...

I once read an article on tiny painted eyes. One thought is to paint the eyes like you'd draw them (or colour them in a colouring book): skin tone around the eyes, white for the white part (sclera), colour for the iris (if possible), a black dot for the pupil. At that scale, though, you generally get either an iris or a pupil, but not both.

Classical technique teaches us never to use pure white, and in many instances you can get away with skin tone for the sclera. Take zoomed-in looks at Classical, Renaissance, Baroque eyes and you will see this. If there is any white at all, it's an off-white, and it's used as a specular highlight called an "enlivener". Enliveners are also unlikely at your scale, although I have seen them a little bit. I think a machine does them, when possible.

The article suggests another approach. Paint the entire eye black, or the colour of the iris. Kind of like what you have done, although not sunglasses. Just the lenses, as it were. Then paint skin tone to cover the black and leave a pupil. That should make a reasonable eye. The author then used a pinpoint to dot the pupil with an enlivener - off white - just a tiny bit offset from the pupil. At that scale, it all looks good.

I can't find the exact article I was thinking of, but there are a number of people who paint eyes that way, and here is another one with great illustrations:

https://taleofpainters.com/2021/01/tutorial-how-to-paint-eyes-more-easily-on-your-miniatures/

Earl J. Woods said...

Love these ideas, especially the pinprick. I'll try that during my next round of painting.