"Painting Horseless riders" Topic

I have some mounted figures that need painted. They don't have horses. So what method do you use to hold them while painting?

I drill a hole between their legs and use white glue to mount a toothpick. I have a jig I built to hold ten toothpick-mounted troops.

that just sounds so wrong…

Fingers

Not elegant, but it works 'til you glue them on the horses – then you can finish the fine details

Yeah, fingers.

I glue my riders (feet) on washers with superglue which enables me to hold them on my magnetic paint holders (classic system of wooden egg cups used upside down with a circular magnet glued to the bottom) which makes it very easy to paint & handle them. The soles of the boots/shoes can be painted once if have freed them from the washers & mounted them on the horses.

I take the same approach as ecaminis. Always with a "this is going to hurt you a lot more than it's going to hurt me…"

I hot glue their feet to paint stirring sticks in the same way that I paint their horses or infantry.

When they are done you just pop them off of the stick easily enough.

You may have to paint the bottom of their feet but I do this after spraying them.

I stick them head down into a blob of blu tac and paint everything except their head and neck. Then stick them to the horses and paint the heads.

Sometimes if the horses aren't ready, I paint the heads first, with them stuck by blu tac on their feet.

I have spare caps from old vallejo bottles of paint and I use tack to hold them there.

I use a black base coat so holding them by the feet is no problem. Once on the horse I put grey on any part of the boot that paint has come off of.

Made holders from squares of softwood, drilled hole and glued pieces of dowel into each hole. Rider held in place with blutack or UHU glue. The holders are about 2 inches square, but you could make them a suitable size for your hands.

That should have said punkrabbit, I use his method!

Thanks for your help, now I have some good ideas to think about.

I use the same method as Punkrabbitt. Just drill a little hole in their backside. But instead of toothpicks I use these thin bamboo skewers and glue them with superglue. These skewers are about 18cm long and give you more grip. Works fine with scales from 10mm up to 28mm.
After painting I just break them off.

I also use this for other small items like 1/1200 buildings and such.

I used to drill holes. Now I have 4" long pieces of wood with 4 finishing nails in it. I use hot glue to hold them to the nails.

I hold them by one foot until the rest of the mini is painted, then that gets finished last….

I do like Painter Jim, hot glue and a nail.