Painting mounted figures

[Ted Galacci]

I am about to clean out a few bins in my unpainted tray and start a passle of Arab cavalry.

I want to paint the riders using a seperate method than the horses.

I get great effect using black primrer and dry brushing white on the horses but I want to bare metal miracle dip the riders as they are mostly Armor :confused: . This leads to two problems:

1 These are Old Glory, and you have to work real hard to fit each rider to a horse, so I have to somehow keep track of what rider matches which horse.

2. I am conered about getting a good glue seat when I finally do put them together.

Does anyone have any recommendations?

[NikosP]

I have a lot of Old glory and I hope I can help

1) What I do is that in a box I place the horse and above it the rider. Whomever I paint I put him above his horse again and vice versa but you have to make sure that no one moves the box :D

2) Whatever fast drying superglue will do

[Chris Brantley]

Painting unmounted horsemen is always a challenge, which is why increasingly, I go ahead and glue the horseman to the horse after priming both and painting the horse (at least the saddle area). After gluing, just shade the juncture areas dark before painting the rest and you won't have to worry about getting into the crevices with your paint brush. Since you are doing the dip technique for armor, this technique won't work.

When working with unmounted figures, I find that most that I work with tend to have a spear or upraised weapon of some type. This is what I hold on to...using an alligater clip if necessary. I lean the figure against a block of styrofoam to dry, at a slight angle with the weapon touching so that the painted surface of the figure is not touching. It is easy to touch up the spear/weapon later after the figure is mounted on the horse.

I've seen some people take the time to glue the unmounted figure to a painting nail or stick with superglue. I've also seen dismounted figures set straddling horizonal dowel rods to dry.

In any event, I tend to paint mounted figures in small batches so that I don't get too aggravated fiddling with them all at once.

[ January 21, 2006, 12:53: Message edited by: Chris Brantley ]

[Ted Galacci]

I like the dowel idea Chris presented. I usually temporarily mount horses on tongue depressors so now I can also glue riders in the same order on dowels. I have a bag full left over from making wheelings sticks.

Thanks for the help!

By the way, I was looking for a better spay on primer and found ULTRA flat black. The paint is used for camoflage patterns on hunting equipement. I tried it out and it works great. The paint actually has a slight brown tinge, but it's working very well for the "black primer then dry brush white" technique I prefer for unarmored figures, including all my horses.

Ted

[Ted Galacci]

Progress report:

I'm working on 3 sets of four horses and 4 riders each. This will give me typical DBA Arab/Muslim army cavalry contingent.

The horses look gorgeous and were so much easier to paint without the riders getting in the way.

Likewise for the riders. I think I'm saving a lot of retouching time--so far.

One think I learned is you can't pass black spray primer as the last coat on a black horse. There are always a few crevices with a hint of bare metal. It actually worked out best to treat black as just another color to paint over white dry brushing.

I am getting a bit concerned about detaching the riders from their dowels. I think I used too much glue on some of them. The dried glue sticking out from underneath is going to strip some of the paint off the backs of the saddles when I seperate. I'm not worried about the front of the saddles.

Also, I had to set everything aside for a week while my apartment was painted, so the glue had a week longer to cure, which I've learned makes temporary mountings harder to detach.

Ted in PA

[Timurilank]

Ted wrote:
I am getting a bit concerned about detaching the riders from their dowels. I think I used too much glue on some of them. The dried glue sticking out from underneath is going to strip some of the paint off the backs of the saddles when I seperate. I'm not worried about the front of the saddles. Ted, I normally don't seperate horse from rider, however since I have been painting my Biblical armies I found leaving the metal casting lable on, which is attached to the feet, you can insert the lable into a strip of foam board. All you need to do then is clip the lable from underneath the boot.

If the riders are delivered without the lable then use very thin card and make a base. Glueing the base to your painting stick or tongue depresser should make things easier.

cheers,

[Mike Demana]

I used to paint the riders separate from the horses, using a dot of white glue on each foot and affixing them to a square of cardboard. Then, I'd pop them off after done, make sure all the glue was cracked off and attach them with epoxy to the horse. All that was left was to retouch the boots.

However, I'm with Chris, nowadays. I just glue them down onto their horse before priming. It's not that much more difficult to paint, and I like to think of the layers of paint as additional "Glue" holding the rider to the horse...