"Painting slingers" Topic

I've never seen a sling, much less painted one.

I have a Newline unit of Mycenaeans to do: slings in leather, I think.

But is the stone visible? There's a blob at the end of the slings in use.

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The patch containing the missile?

Slings from woven vegetable fibre, usually –

is an Egyptian one, with a modern copy, made of linen. Plenty of modern pictures showing actual slingers: usually you can just about make out the stone nestled in its pouch.

For instance
YouTube link
YouTube link

But on those figures, the "blob" just looks like the pouch.

Yes, I'd say the blob at the end of the sling is the patch containing the bullet. The stone is very unlikely to be visible.

The type of missile thrown depended on where the slingers were from. Xenophon describes the Persians slinging stones as big as a mans fist – contrasting this with lead sling bullets used by the Rhodians. Balearic slingers depicted on Trajans column show round stones being used – there have also been piles of sling stones excavated from Celtic sites. Lead sling bullets were widely used by the Romans and their Italic allies. Most miniatures however seem to show slingers with a stone in the sling not lead sling bullets which are pretty small (3cmx1.5cm)

If they were lead, depending on the manufacturer, you might be able to leave them unpainted.

AFAIK the low-tech Mycenaeans (Bronze Age) would not have used lead slingshot?

I've got a Trojan army, very similar. I paint the slings brown and the stones a whitish gray. It gives a nice contrast.