Is eye´s iris very important for face´s painting? Yes and maybe, eye´s iris gets tip about what is person watching or looking, but eye can get tips, too. Light or shade with eye´s iris can presents e.g. time or sun´s course. As Deaf, I am used to have good eye contacts when I sign with my Deaf friends. If he is looking to another person, it means that he can not see both (me and him) when we signs as time. Eye choose one object for looking, too.
When I was reading Katarina Sokolova´s article about painting fantasy eyes by Painter in ImagineFX 018 (june 2007), p. 84-85, I interested in painting the eyes. After many studies, I noticed that making "real-looked" eye´s iris was more difficulty. After many training with Painter and Photoshop plus other softwares, I learned to make eye´s iris as faster way. I think that all Artists will have the different ways to paint eye´s iris. Here is my exampel how I paint eye´s iris by Photoshop:
1) I painted the dark and light blue colours as free then I used Radial Blur:

2) I chose Mesh-brush and black as its colour:

3) Then I used Radial blur again:

3) I chose Circle-brush (Assorted Brushes) the cutted as wheel:

4) I used Soft oil pastel-brush (Dry Media Brushes), black, 17% opacity:

5) I resized and used Free Transform the I used Smudge tool:

6) After Blur more, blue eye´s iris is finish:

Then paint with light or shades if needs. My studies continues...
Enjoy! Cheers, deaf Janne
Comments
drawde said:
I usually just fumble around with the round brush until I find a mood in the eyes. lol
But this definitely works too. To finish, you could run the sharpen tool
(in Photoshop) to bring out some of the lines also. Experiment and sharpen
just small parts of the iris, or go on and do the whole.
Every minute changes makes a difference.
Thank you so much for sharing this process/tutorial.
Mucho appreciated.
/drawde
deafjanne said:
Thanks for your comment. Glad to "hear" that my "trick tips" is fruitful:) I did find many films about drawing/painting the eyes into youtube and other website (e.g. yahoo video), here is one good example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQJs-Vlv4dw
I think that one can find more tips about drawing/painting the eyes into new or next imagineFX-numbers, too. I am interested in how make the eyes as 3D, too:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aokCb7lCRj0
I am still training to paint a mouth, because it is still difficult to me:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5p1B2Z9hKQ
Cheers, deaf Janne