I am a beginner miniature painter and Star Wars Imperial Assault is my first miniature game. I have painted most of the figures in almost all of the expansions and have learned a lot along the way. However, paining the eyes remains a challenge. Hit and miss with miss most of the time. So far I have settled with putting a small drop of Citadel Shade: Nuln Oil to make the eyes darker so that they can stand out on the face a bit.

Can someone please share their take on paining the eyes. Do you just use toothpick to add a dot or paint the whole eyeball or use the shade?

A small drop of a white wash-consistency to the eye, let it dry, then paint the pupil either with a tootpick or a single strand of brush. I never try to make the figure look straight forward but a little sideways, so a little inconsistency between the eyes does not matter.

Then if needed, retouch to fix any overflow of the white.

Start by painting the eye white. Then put a black wash in the eye to get the edges. Go back over the eye with white again to clean it up. Then put in the pupil with a small brush. Don't be afraid to go back in with white again to fix the shape of the pupil.

The most important part is bracing your hands while painting. Especially so when painting eyes. I always put the mini in my hands and then brace my wrists on my desk.

There are obviously many ways, but I'll share mine. Although I'm also always trying to improve my technique.

0. Whichever way you go, DON'T use pure white for the eyeball. Because eyeballs are not pure white. Pure white makes them stand out too much, like the figure is wide-eyed and scared, or make it look cartoony. Use some off-white instead. Pure white is OK only if you add a shade on top of it afterwards.

1. Shade the eye area with a dark wash. Or you can do this after step 2 also.

2. Brace yourself, meaning lock the wrists against the table and together so that the only moving part in your body are the two fingers holding the brush. Holding breath may help. Paint the eyeball with off-white such as light sand, light beige, whatever. If it's messy that's ok, you can clean around it with skin colors afterwards.

3. Paint a black pupil. The key is to have a good tip on the brush, not so much how many strands it has. A1bert's single hair (I know he said it tongue in cheek) brush won't work because without any belly the paint dries on the hairs before you can bring it up to the face. I recommend Winsor & Newton Series 7 Miniature size 0 or 00. Premium Kolinsky brushes like W&N or Rosemaries have very sharp tips and they keep their shapes.

OR, cheat and use a size 005 (0.2mm) pen. Sakura Pigma Micron is a popular one. Btw, this picture is one of my earlier attempts and here the eyeballs may have ended too brown... (still better than pure white)

3.5 More pupil and less white around it usually looks better. Again too much white with narrow pupils in the middle makes a wide-eyed look.

4. Lastly, if you made a mess, don't worry. Start painting skin around the eyes and hem it in. You may have to introduce a dark wash again to separate the eyes from the eyelids. Be careful.

I'm going to link Vince Venturella's video here that he uploaded yesterday. He deserves way more viewers, so check out the other videos in his Hobby Cheating series as well.

Hipsu your contributions to this forum are amazing, thank you.

I've given up on painting the eyes. :\