Squidy53 wrote: ↑August 20th, 2025, 1:57 am
At the risk of asking the magician to reveal one trick too many, are the eyes waterslide decals?
No secrets here, I believe in sharing all techniques. A rising tide floats all boats, as they say.
For the eyes I actually did trust my relatively steady hand. They were hand painted using a fine brush.
I always start with a darker color - dark brown in this case - watered down to a water-color consistency to get the outline and position. Then I use an undiluted version of the color to fill in the circle.
A lighter color then goes over top of that, almost - but not quite - touching the outer rim of the dark color. Look at your own eyes and you'll see a darker outer edge on the iris.
I then paint the striations of the iris with either the darkest color or an even lighter color (depends on my mood and feeling about the eye color). Between the striations I now use the very tip of the brush to place small dots.
The pupil goes in next and depending on how the colors are sitting I will sometimes use a new color (green/brown/yellow) to paint a faint circle at the outer edge of the pupil (again, look at your own eyes and you'll see what I'm referring to).
After everything is thoroughly dry the whole eye then gets a coat of Tamiya gloss clear.
By they way, I uses a slightly different technique - but only slightly - for 1:1 scale pieces where you have a lot more room for detail.
Well done Derek!!!
Incredibly impressive, none the less. It's this kind of effort, among other skills, that makes you an exceptional modelmaker.
