In this tutorial I’ll describe the steps I use to create the ‘glowing eye’ lens effect on my Raptors Space Marines. You can use this method with any chapter or colour scheme, just substitute the colours for your own.
Step 1
Using your armour highlight colour (in this case Citadel Ogryn Camo Air), paint the whole lens and an area overlapping it top and bottom.
Step 2
Paint an area just inside this using a 50/50 mix of your armour highlight colour and the lens colour (in this case Vallejo Model Air 71089 Light Sea Blue).
Step 3
Now paint just the lens itself using the lens colour.
Step 4
Lastly, paint a thin line or dot in the centre of the lens using white.
And there you have it – quick and easy glowing eyes!
How would I go about painting glowing green eyes with red armor (i.e. world eaters)?
Hi Kralgor,
It would really just be a case of swapping colours. So you’d paint an area covering and overlapping the eye lens with your red armour highlight colour. Then mix green into that and paint a slightly smaller area inside the first (but still overlapping the lens). Then paint pure green on the lens itself, and white in the very centre.
Thanks so much for the reply! How would switching colors in this case work though? The armour highlight color I will be using is a red-orange color. So if I mix that with green I’m afraid I will get a very ugly brown as orange/red and green mixed make brown. Any suggestions?
Hmmm… it may work if you use a very light / bright green. Maybe even a fluorescent green…
But if not, I think I would use white instead of green and then do a glaze with green over the top, and probably a wash on the lens itself.
Might be a little late, but depending on the shade of green, you could try adding an extra transition through yellow. I’d suggest playing around on a spare head.
Thanks for the tutorial! How do you think you would apply this to metallic colours – should I replace the metallic highlight colour with a grey or white?
That’s a good question! You could try mixing the metallic in with your lens colour – or failing that yes I think grey or white would work.