Painting advice needed.

[Grailkeeper]

I'm going to paint a commissar model, which features a lot of black cloth. I normally highlight black power armour using shades of blue, - will this work for cloth? I am aiming for a very worn, dirty, faded black so I was thinking maybe using shades of brown.

Also if anyone can link me to any tutorials for painting eyes, that would be great.

[pauljc]

Brown would indeed work very well as a black highlight.

I usually don't bother with eyes, as I find my infantry look more realistic when the eye area is just shaded in, as if cast under shadow. Nobody really sees eyes at a distance.

[Grailkeeper]

This is something og a one off mini, that I want to lavish a lot of attention on, rather than being a bit of line infantry that I'll have to paint dozens of.

[SotonShades]

If you are going for a worn out look, greys could work really well to shade the black, but make sure you do very smooth blending as harsh highlights would look wierd. I suppose a more ideal combination would be shading with browns lower down, possibly around the cuffs of his sleeves, anywhere that would regularly get muddied, so would get ingrained mud (that kind of staining that never quite comes out) with the greyer areas on the areas that dont soak up all the crud.

As for eyes, GW has done several painting workshops/masterclasses on faces, all of which cover how to do eyes, and most of which are availible on the GW website.

[Iceman]

For the eyes I start by painting the eyeball area white with a very tiny brush. Then I use a .005 black Sharpie fine point marker to dot the pupil. This has pretty realistic results and is fairly quick which was an important consideration for my IG army.

[fuzzbuket]

it depends on the mood of the mini, personally for a muddy feel id go with either a brown (bleached bone, snakebite leather, calthan brown) or a grey (shadow grey could be fantastic!)

and for eyes: it depends how confident you are!

easy: just a black line, what is used in WWII scale models and small scales.
mid: black for the whole eye, then white leaving a small black rim arounf the edge, then painting a small black line down the middle. ( a white dot in the pupil wouldnt be amiss)
SUPERHARD: same as mid but when painting the pupil paint a colourd line then paint a black dot in it then a tiny white dot in the eye.

EXAMPLE: (note the mid done on the face and the hard on the chest)
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-DbCFZkw1ZyY/TsgqsHICjFI/AAAAAAAABKU/h8Vbxg9KnzU/s1600/DSCN6235.JPG

[HarlekissofDeath]

For highlighting black cloth I recommend shades of grey, and really spend some good time doing it. Lots of layers.
As for eyes I recommend painting them first on your face before doing anything else. Then Paint the white on the eyes, and then just a really tiny brush (davinci makes a small one (smaller than GW)) dot the eyes. If you get the white or black on the face don't worry about it because you can paint over it when you paint the face.
The biggest thing is practice makes perfect. Faces can be daunting, but now that I have done them enough they are one of my favorite features to paint on a model, because you can put a lot of detail on them and really be proud of it.

[Grailkeeper]

I tried using blue, it was more noticeable than on power armour. I may start again, but I'll leave it for now

[Thornblood]

Black cloth, and especially leather can look really good just a little bit lighter.

I would paint the model a dark charcoal colour (a touch lighter than chaos black, waaay darker than codex grey) and highlight and shade from there. blending looks great on cloth. Pushing the highlights brighter makes it look more like leather.

As for eyes I dont know of a good tutorial. I have painted eyes a few ways over the years. A good one is painting them black and putting two white dots on each side of where you want the pupil to be, this gives the ey an outline and stops any boss-eyed miniatures from happening. However it also means the pupil is not particularly circular. If it goes wrong, overload the brush with water, slop it on and you can wipe off the mistake and try again as white comes off of black pretty easily.

Painting the eyes black, then white (so there is black left at the edges for a distinct outline), then trying to get straight pupils is harder, but at least you get circular pupils. However painting black pupils onto whites of the eyes is very unforgiving if you mess up. I have also known painters to layer colour on between the white and black layers to try and get some colours in eyes. I have never succeeded at this, however I have seen it work.

For eyes getting the right consistency of paint is vital. Same thickness as milk. You basically want it to be as thin as it can be without it running into the recesses. It needs good surface tension to work.