Painting and mounting.

A forum for discussion of anything to do with modelling for Field of Glory, including figures, painting, basing, terrain, buildings, uniform research and more.

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mikekh
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Painting and mounting.

Post by mikekh »

How do folk paint their figures? I don't mean in terms of washes, highlights etc., more from the perspective of handling figures when painting. For 25s I have individual 'bases' made from a broom handle. About 1inch in diameter and half an inch thick. Just cut a load from a broom handle. Each figure is lightly superglued on and the bases allow easy handling when painting. Sometimes I use this method with 15s but recently I've taken to using 12 inch long slats of half inch square wood, I glue a load of figures on and this allows me to hold 15-20 figures at once and quickly apply the paint. Quite a good paint job can be done in a very short time. Just recently I painted a read-made-army of WotR Lancastrians in 12 hours, spread over 4-5 days, so an army in a weekend is achievable. I glued the whole army onto several of these slats and spray primed then sprayed black - from then on its all downhill!

Cheers

Mike
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Post by hammy »

I have a load of 4" nails with flat heads and I stick the figures I am painting to these nails with evostik or some similar glue. Once the glue dries I can easily manipulate a figure to get at it to paint and I stick the nails in a big foam block to hold them while I am not painting them.

I have another smaller foam block I use when I prime and varnish the figures to hold them closer together so I can spray them.
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Post by rbodleyscott »

I usually stick them to individual 1.5" deep cardboard tabs.

The best thing I ever used were the back end of Ayre's spatulas. (Wooden spatulas for taking cervical pap smears). Unfortunately cervical smears are now taken using plastic brushes so this is no longer an option. (Unless anyone knows where the world supply of redundant Ayre's spatulas is now held),
shall
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Post by shall »

I stick them onto coins 1ps adn 2ps .... I think it might be treason to put them on the Queens head but she does such a fine job of making them handlable! Working capital of about £1.50 in total but reuseable. long lasting, and worth just as much at the end (less a bit of inflation). :)

Si
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Post by ars_belli »

I do pretty much the same thing as Hammy. I blu-tac each figure on a large flat-head nail while painting. Works great!

Cheers,
Scott
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Post by Quintus »

I used lollipop sticks from a craft shop for the 6mm and 2mm Napoleonics that I have been painting. I thought of going for a larger spatula-type stick from the craft shop too, but this flat headed nail idea sounds really good. I expect that it would be less tiring to hold.
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Post by fukateesays »

I stick 3 28mms on a strip of beer mat with super glue -very easy to remove when you're done.
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Post by BrianC »

I do as you do Mike. other than I prime individually then mount my 15mm figures onto foot long spars with enough room to paint all sides of the figure. Then base them and dullcoat.
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Post by stevesykes »

I cut strips of corrugated cardboard about 6-8 inches long - Amazon packing is good - and stick six or eight foot figures or four mounted figures to them using copydex rubber glue. This peels off without damage when the figures are painted. Then I prime them with Halford's aerosol primer and they're ready for painting. I picked up a cheap lazy susan turntable from IKEA which lets you turn the strips around without touching them when priming them. The spacing between the figures lets a brush get to all the bits and having several figures on a strip means you're not picking up and putting down figures a lot. I should point out these are 15s - having several 28mm figures on a strip would probably bring on RSI.
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Post by Kineas1 »

I paint 28mm--Officers and specialty figs go on old 40K rounds or lately get spiked into wine corks. Main line figures of foot got four to a stir stick/Popsicle stick.

For cavalry, every horse goes on an individual plasticard base (I painted a Scythian Army two years back and now I have an infinite number of bases). I drill a 1/16th hole in every rider with a dremmel, and then spike him on 1/16th brass rod set in an old billet of wood--I paint 6 at a time, friction fit, and then use the same hole to pin the riders to the mounts, which makes cavalry a heck of a lot more robust and is worth the evening you'll invest in prepping your cav.
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Post by ixlegion »

My answer is to blu-tac the figures onto the bases they will ( ultimately ) be based on. But faced sideways for easy access to the figure. This usually means 2-3 figures to a base, and therefore in-the-hand for painting. My psyche can no longer cope with painting 12-24 figures on a long strip of wood or similar, in batches of flesh then armour then tunic, etc. So I put 3-4 bases ( 6 - 12 figure ) in front of me and focus on painting them to completion, but with the flexibility of completing what I am holding without being intimidated by seeing other unstarted figures :)
For those, like me, who are subject to near constant distractions .. it feels good to say that at least I've completed a base or two instead of saying I've managed to block colour 20.

Ahhh forgot a stage... all priming is done by spraying the figures on the longest piece of wood I have ( current one is 2 1/2 ft ), with the four long sides festooned with blu-tacked figures. Then retouch the parts the spray didn't reach when mounted on the detail painting bases.

Alan
Kineas1
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Post by Kineas1 »

I have a trick--not sure how many people do it--in that I prime most figures black (okay, so do most folks). When the paint is dry, I re-prime or hand touch the black so there's NO errors. Then I lightly re-prime in red-brown--rustoleum red brown, in fact. I do it as if air-brushing, with a light touch, so that the black recesses are not filled.

This provides instant colour contrast over the whole figure, makes detail way easier to pick out, and greatly warms flesh tones and reds.

Just my 2 cents.
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Post by Landsknecht »

I prefer to mount 25mm figures before I paint. I just don't like getting any terrain material I use when basing on figures I've spent a bit of time painting.
mikekh
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Post by mikekh »

Kineas1 wrote:I have a trick--not sure how many people do it--in that I prime most figures black (okay, so do most folks). When the paint is dry, I re-prime or hand touch the black so there's NO errors. Then I lightly re-prime in red-brown--rustoleum red brown, in fact. I do it as if air-brushing, with a light touch, so that the black recesses are not filled.

This provides instant colour contrast over the whole figure, makes detail way easier to pick out, and greatly warms flesh tones and reds.

Just my 2 cents.
I see. Like a 'heavy' dry brushing to lighten part of the black and to give a less dark foundation.
Kineas1
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Post by Kineas1 »

Exactly. It makes browns and reds richer without wrecking blues and grays. It is much easier to lay white over. And the older I get, the better I like having my details defined.
Ironhand
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Post by Ironhand »

I glue my figures (lightly with PVA) onto craft sticks (aka "popsicle" sticks or "tongue depressors"). That way I can turn them as needed without touching the figures, and the sticks are dirt cheap.
Kineas1
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Post by Kineas1 »

Popsicle sticks--yes!

I do the same when I'm doing large units in similar schemes (16 nearly naked javelin men, for instance). Do you glue them down or tack them? I'm having trouble getting the figs to stay glued with white glue.
Ironhand
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Post by Ironhand »

I use just plain old white glue, and I can't say I've had any problems getting the figures to stay put. I do file the figure bottoms flat when I'm cleaning up the figure first, and some of the figures tend to be "dished" on the bottom so I put a ring of of glue around the outer edge to make sure the figure, glue, and stick are all in contact with each other.
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Post by maximvs »

I tend to use odd lengths of narrow card (usually off-cuts from other basing jobs), with a small dab of 'Copydex' (PVA type adhesive) to stick the figures down. This pulls off easily once you're done. The downside to this method is that Copydex can take hours to set on non absorbent material, so patience is necessary. So glue up the card before you start to prepare the figures!

Double sided tape would probably be better but I've never remembered to get any so I've never tried it!
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Post by flameberge »

Its interesting to read the different ways people paint their figures.
15mm figures I also buy "craft sticks" and glue 7-8 figures to a stick with Elmer's glue. I find that it holds strong enough that they don't fall of but I can pop the figures off when they are done without ruining the paint job.
25mm figures a prime first and superglue them individually to an approximately 1" square plastic base. I prime the figure including the bottom of the figure before I glue it to the base so I can easily remove the figure when the painting is done.
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