​Adding to the thoughts I had on painting eyeballs I previously blogged about here. ​​​One of the areas I saw the most room for improvement was in painting pupils. I had come up with a method of making stencils for the pupils that I really liked, but I was not happy with the brushmarks in the pupils.

  Solution- make the stencils as previously, mask out the rest of the eye as well, and SPRAY the pupil on with spray paint. 

​Another interesting and challenging thing about painting eyes is that painted parts look completely different when viewed from the front or the back, as the curve of the plastic greatly magnifies anything in the center. Here, these two pupils are painted the same size, but you can see how much bigger the pupil looks when viewed from the front. 





I find it helpful when designing eyes to make a mock up like this on paper, and then put the resin eye over it to see how the curve will change it.  

Easy peasy!

​Again you can see how much bigger the pupil looks, Also, you can see how anything painted around the outer edge  is greatly minimized. The blue in the mock up fills the outer half of the circle, but when the eye is placed over it, only a thin rim of blue is visible.

Starting to paint the actual eyes. Here they are both viewed from the back...

 And then one flipped over to show how different it looks when viewed from the front. 

So I ordered the same jawset from DVC that I had the last time, the pink/white semi realistic large K9 jawset, and dremelled it down to make it fit my own resin head. I shortened the front of the upper jaw, as otherwise the teeth would sit too far back in the head, and narrowed the back of the lower jaw as otherwise it wouldn't fit in the head at all. Fortunately the color is solid all the way through these jawsets so the dremelling didn't show as much as it might have otherwise.

Left, my handy dandy color notebook, and below, my reference photos. I played with colors until I was satisfied with how they looked with the jawset- my intention wasn't to paint over the entire jawset, just to add some accents and shadings. (One thing to keep in mind- acrylic paint darkens slightly as it dies.) The colors I ultimately settled on were a mix of titanium white, quinacridone crimson, and just a teeny smidge of yellow ochre for the pink parts of the gums, and a mix of burnt sienna, carbon black and titanium white for the brown parts. For the teeth I settled on titanium white and yellow ochre, using more white toward the tips of the teeth and more ochre at the bases, to paint the "tartar buildup" there. 

It also helps to have the big pile of reject resin eyes from my Little WIndows debacle to experiment on. The one in this picture is one of these- you'll notice the bubbles and the slightly yellow cast to the clear resin.

But in any case I was able to recreate the color scheme I used. Here's the ring of color around the pupil, Burnt Sienna, applied with a #1 liner brush. I've found it's impossible to find brushes too thin and skinny to paint these eyes.

The next color added, Iridescent Copper. God how I love metallic paints!!

Next, a mix of Iridescent Copper and Yellow Ochre. As much as I want to make everything shiny, adding a little matte paint into the mix helps break up the sheen and thus adds an interesting sparkle.

Building up the layers of color. Next, a mix of Cadmium Yellow Medium Hue and Iridescent Gold. Again, adding a little matte color into the metallic.

Now it's finally time to MAKE IT SHINY!! A layer of Iridescent Gold applied straight up, this time with a "bigger" brush, a #2 round. This picture, taken with a flash, shows how the lines of matte paint breaks up the metallic paint and adds that sparkle.

Next to last step, a layer of Interference Gold, applied with an even "bigger"  brush, a #4 round. I like just the little extra depth of color this paint adds.

Finally, a layer of black paint, applied with a 1/2" wash brush. Before this step I check to make sure there are no thin spots in the last two layers of colors  by laying the eye down on a sheet of black paper and making sure there's nothing that leaps out at me. The black adds a lot more depth to the color and helps to show up the layers of brushstrokes.

In my last post I failed to cast usable resin eye blanks using Little Windows resin and so bought blanks from Dreamvision Creations.In this post I will paint pupils on them. For the last furry head, I used a “Staedler Professional Combo Circle Template", from here on in known as "The Circle Thingy” to lightly trace pupils onto my resin eye blank with a black watercolor pencil, which I then carefully painted in. This time I wanted to make a stencil for the pupil, so I could fuss a little more with its placement. The resin eyes hugely magnify any errors at the center, so if the placement looks a little off from the back of the eye, it can look way off from the front!

Then to make a stencil. A craft hole punch in the size I selected (grey things in pictures) comes in handy here. I make sure the punch is nice and sharp by punching lots of holes in a sheet of aluminum foil (yes, really). Then I carefully stick a piece of Frog Tape onto a piece of wax paper. Frog Tape is supposedly a special kind of masking tape that is less prone to paint bleeding under its edges than other masking tapes, so is more likely to make sharp clean lines. Using the Circle Thingy I draw a circle on the tape/wax paper the size of the eye and then mark the center on the circle using the guides on the template (you can see some of them around large opening on the Circle Thingy in the picture to the left.)

Then I rub the edges of the stencil down to make sure they're firmly attached to the eye.  Then I use a fluid body acrylic (aka bottled, not tubed) such as Golden, and a wide, flat wash  brush to apply the paint. The wash brush tends to leave fewer  brushstrokes in my experience. I try to pat the paint on as much as possible, and try not to stroke the paint up under the edges of the stencil.