I usually do one eye, then the other with each step, and it dries in
between enough to keep moving.
Materials:
Paints: coral pink, ivory white, burnt umber, raw sienna, Kims gold, black, irridescent blue
Brushes: medium brush to paint entire eye; smaller brush to paint iris, pinks/whites; very fine tipped brush
Glossy clear nail polish
I usually do one eye, then the other with each step, and it dries in
between enough to keep moving.
I start by painting my eyes completely black.
Then I paint any eye whites
and pinking next, if any is necessary; not all horses have eye white
showing unless they are looking in a specific direction. I use a Coral Pink and my Ivory
White for that. I may have to
paint the black again if I mess up a bit!
Then, I mix Burnt Umber and a tiny bit of Raw Sienna with
a teeny tiny mix of Kims Gold. I paint in the iris, leaving a thin black
ring around the outside of the iris. If this is a traditional scale horse, I
will actually blend in a little black to a portion of this mix, and
graduate (blend) the iris color into the black ring with that.
After that
dries, I do the pupil. Remember, horses have
weird pupils...they are NOT round but horizontal - sort of like thin
rectangles. If I don't mess up the pupil (my hand shakes so I sometimes
blob it...doh!!), I then just paint over it with the iris color again.
After the pupil is in, I take a very fine tipped brush and paint a
really thin crescent around the outer bottom corner of the pupil, leaving
some of the iris on both sides of the crescent IN GOLD. On Traditionals, I
may blend more gold with the iris color...and lay that on a little heavy in
that crescent. This adds a lot of depth to the eyes.
Then, last step, is
using a Iridescent Blue that I got in the shirt paint section at Walmart.
I take a teeny tiny dot on my super fine brush, and put a small little dot
or rectangle INSIDE the pupil...leaving black all the way around it.
After
all is dried, and I have sprayed my horse with finish spray (finish spray
seems to dissolve nail polish for some reason), I gloss the eyes with nail
polish. On Stablemates and smaller, I use one of my old paint brushes that
I have snipped with fingernail clippers to size instead of the nail polish
brush, cleaning it off with a paper towel as soon as I am done and in between eyes. That keeps me from slobbing the nail polish all over OUTSIDE
the eyeball!!!
Hope this helps.
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