Quick & Easy Figure Handling (while painting) Tip

Reading Jenny's great tip about painting pedestals for figures reminded me of something I like to do when painting figures.

I tend to get up close and personal (No! Not in that way!!) with my figures when painting, and sometimes I find a pedestal or mounting block too chunky for me to comfortably handle (it's a personal preference). Unfortunately this means I handle the figure a lot, and with that comes the body oils and sweats secreted by hands and fingers which has a negative effect on acrylic paints (i.e. they rub off!).

So to cut what could be a long story short, what I do is wrap the (assembled) figure in cling wrap (seran wrap?), and then as I paint from the top down simply peal the wrap down, not unlike peeling a banana, as I move along. I do confess the idea is not my own, but I don't recall who I learnt it from.

Pictures follow. This is a (unfinished - there is no other sort for me) EVD 54mm Sertorian Legionary I started Jan '08. Unfortunately I didn't photograph the figure completely wrapped (or maybe I did, I'll have to check), but I think you will get the general gist of what I mean by the two pictures below.




HTH, any questions or comments: shoot!

Rudi

p.s. for anyone wanting to see a few more pics of this project, see here: SBS on my Blog

interesting and clever rudi! indeed very clever!

this will be very useful for some folks!

Nice tip Tarok.

I'm not sure I would want to use it for 1/35 but this should come very handy with larger figures.

Hi Laura,

Thanks! Well I'm not a very clever guy, but I remembered who credit belongs to for showing me this: Mike Butler of the MedRom forum

Thanks though, appreciate you looking and commenting

Rudi

Hi Richard,

(I keep adding "son" as a suffix whenever I type your name, force of habit I guess )

Thanks for looking and commenting Richard. Actually a 54mm size figure is only 4mm bigger than a 1/35 scale figure (which should be 49-50mm) so it's pretty easy to use this technique for the latter sized figure as well. I will admit that I don't use this trick on Warhammer sized figgies though.

Rudi

The only 54mm figures I have are from the GW Inquisitor range and they have more than a 4mm difference. It seem's that they took great liberties with scale as usual

Richard Marchand wrote:The only 54mm figures I have are from the GW Inquisitor range and they have more than a 4mm difference. It seem's that they took great liberties with scale as usual

LOL! They've probably gone for an heroic type size where the figure measures closer to 60-65mm?

Tarok wrote:LOL! They've probably gone for an heroic type size where the figure measures closer to 60-65mm?

Hehe, exactly like you said. I measured one of them and it's 60mm to the top of the head I also compard it to a 1/35 figure and it's not that bigger So 'ill have to apologize and say that I may use you tips for 1/35 figure after all

LOL! Lucky guess, Richard, lucky guess