Eye's "The Lay Method"

[Dennis Bragg]

Well here is my attempt at a tutorial on the lay method for eye's. Hope this will help those who are intrested in how this is done. It's not the only way of course, but this is how I do it.


This hide has been thinned but for the detail on the face, as you can see the eye's have all the skin that you would normally thin for tucking. I take a scalpel and carfully cut as close as you can to the edge of the eyelid, all the way around to remove most of the lid and skin.









The skin is removed and now you need to thin the area around the eye being very carefull along the edge of the lid. Thin down till you see the glands and remove them. I do most of my thinning with a skife knife.





This eye is thinned, now do the other.





Both are ready and now I thin the rest of the face, bondo the ears, hide paste on all but the face. I then slip the hide on the manikin,and set the antlers. Now I set the eye's and mold the lid's.







Now I apply hide paste on the face and all around the eye's, I don't worry about getting it on the glass, it is easy to clean when done, and pull the hide up on the face and sew it up. Now I'm ready to shape the eye's.



I start with one pin in the front corner, pushed all the way in.

W
                                                                                               
With a modeling tool I shape the eye, using a brush to smooth everything out and set the lid right to the glass. Take the modeling tool and gently run along the edge of the glass with upward pressure to set the lashes at the correct angle.



Then do the same on the other side.





You will have the next morning to do any fine tuning, as the head dries check the eye's and use a firm brush to apply a little pressure around the lid's if needed. By the third day they will be set as the rest of the drying takes place.




 This last photo is 6 days after the deer was mounted, the eye's have remained where I set them.




I hope this was helpfull to those who wanted to learn about this method of eyework. The pic's are a little dark, with a flash it was a washout, but you can get the jist of it. Dennis

[Dennis Bragg]

OK, what did I do wrong?

[buckslayer]

maybe the pics were to big

or you might have to split it up between a couple of posts

[Dennis Bragg]

Well, I edited them to the size that it said was ok, when you insert you can put multiple pic's in the same post, so it say's. I preveiwed it and it looked alright.

[Uncle Harley]

did you use photo bucket or other picture service or did you just insert images from your computer? 

[Dennis Bragg]

I used photobucket, it is my first time using it, I usually attach them.

[Uncle Harley]

and you copied and pasted the img code for each pic?  I'm guessing you are missing mabey the first bracket or \  because it's showing the closing [img]  meaning that there wasn't a complete img code to open  because if both img brackets were in the string it will only show the image that is between them

[Dennis Bragg]

I did them one at a time. I clicked on the code box under each pic to copy and then insert, then paste.

[Uncle Harley]

click on the the code, it will say copied, but I always right click and then select copy and then just paste directly into the reply box on here

[Dennis Bragg]

Thanks a million, I'll try and fix them.

[Uncle Harley]

  I think there is an extra [img] at the end of your code  try modifying your original post and remove them, doesn't look like it works in a reply

[michael p.]

Great tutorial!!   That is EXACTLY how I do it,  but yours still look better LOL

[RDA]

Yup,, Nice job,,  now they can see the really cool way to do ti!!!

[Redwolf]

nice tutorial. i did that with a black bear yesterday and it worked great

[Pascal]

I'm glad to see some other people do this as well. Everyone talks about tucking, but I get much better results with less work by this method. Great tutorial.