How to Paint Eyes on a Figurine (Without Losing Your Nerve)

Eyes are the step people put off until last, and then stare at for ten minutes before touching. That makes sense. They're tiny, they sit right in the middle of the face, and you can't really see them clearly until the paint is already on. Cartoon-style eyes on a figurine only need two colours, a white (or an off-white) and a black, and a simple order of steps. Follow them and you'll get eyes that look alive from arm's length, which is the distance anyone will actually look at them from.

Before you start

• Paint the eyes last, or close to last. Skin, hair and clothing first. That way you're never resting your hand on a wet face while working on something else.
• Use your smallest brush, and a toothpick. The fine brush is for the white. A toothpick (or the back end of a thin brush) is often easier than bristles for the black dot, because it can't splay.
• Brace your hands. Rest both wrists on the table, or touch the heels of your hands together so the figurine and the brush hand move as one unit. Most shaky lines come from hands floating in the air, not from an unsteady hand.
• Good light, close up. A desk lamp angled from the side shows the little hollows of the eye sockets far better than an overhead light.
• Thin the paint slightly. Thick paint forms a blob on the brush tip and drops off all at once. A tiny touch of water so it flows like milk, not like yoghurt, gives you control.

Step 1: The white base coat

Pick up a small amount of white on the tip of your fine brush and fill in the eye shape that's sculpted on the face. Work from the middle of the eye outwards, so if the brush slips it slips into the area you're painting rather than onto the skin. You don't need to reach every edge perfectly on the first pass.

One thin coat will probably look a little streaky. That's fine. Let it dry, then do a second thin coat. Two thin coats always look smoother than one thick one, and they won't fill in the sculpted detail around the eye.

Step 2: Wait. Properly.

This is the step everyone skips, and it's the one that matters most. If you put the black on while the white is still soft, the black bleeds into it and turns into a grey smudge, or the brush drags the white up with it. Give the white a good 15 to 20 minutes to dry. Touch-dry isn't the same as properly dry, so if you're unsure, wait a little longer. Paint the other figurine, have a cup of chai, come back.

Step 3: The black dot

Now the pupil. The trick is to dot, not draw. Dip just the tip of your toothpick or brush into the black, dab off the excess on the edge of the pot or a scrap of paper, then touch it straight down onto the white and lift it straight up. One small touch. Don't drag or twist it.

1. Start smaller than you think. You can always make a dot bigger with a second touch. Making it smaller means repainting the white.
2. Do one eye, then immediately do the other while you still have the same amount of paint on the tip. That's the easiest way to get two pupils the same size.
3. Re-dip for every single dot. Paint on a toothpick dries in seconds, and a half-dry tip leaves a ragged mark.
4. If a dot comes out lopsided, leave it to dry before deciding. Very often it looks fine once you hold the figurine at a normal distance.

Where to place the pupils

Where the dots sit decides where the figurine is looking, so this is worth a moment's thought before you touch the white.

• Looking straight at you: put each dot in the middle of its eye, or very slightly towards the nose. That tiny shift inwards stops the eyes looking like they're drifting apart.
• Looking to one side: move both dots the same way, by the same amount. Both pupils always point in the same direction; one left and one right is what makes eyes look cross-eyed or startled.
• Keep them at the same height. Check the two eyes against each other from the front before the second dot goes on. One pupil higher than the other is the thing people notice first.
• Touching the top edge reads as friendly. A dot that sits close to, or just touching, the upper lid makes the figure look relaxed. A dot floating in the middle of a lot of white can look surprised.
• Follow the photo if you like. If the person in your photo is glancing at someone beside them, angle the pupils that way. It's a small detail that makes the figurine feel like them.

Don't chase perfection

Your eyes will not look like the picture on a screen, and that's not the goal. At this size, a slightly uneven pupil or a white that's a hair too wide gives a hand-painted face its character. Nobody is going to inspect your figurine under a magnifying glass. They're going to see it on a shelf and recognise the person, and that recognition comes far more from hair, skin colour and clothing than from whether a dot is half a millimetre off.

The thing that ruins eyes is usually trying to fix them over and over while they're wet. If one really bothers you, let it dry completely, paint white over the black, wait again, and redo the dot. It's a two-minute fix, and you'll only ever need it once or twice.