"How do you paint a spiral lance or flagpole?" Topic

Let's assume a white lance or flagpole, with a red spiral.
One important question is whether you paint it first before gluing it in place.

Darn Austrians! Darn knights! Etc!

How do I paint one? Poorly. Very poorly. But yes, It's helpful it it's not already attached to the knight. My efforts would be marginally less terrible.

It's a challenge. I generally start with the most visible angle, considering how the mini is going to be viewed, i.e. top down. Paint the lines parallel and smoothly without trying to rotate the figure. Then repeat at next adjacent angle, etc. There will be goofs, but if they are not easily seen from above then don't worry about them.

"Can you form some sort of rudimentary lathe?"

To be clear, I'm only half joking. If you can fix a lance in something that will turn, like a pin vise or hand drill or a slow electric drill/rotary tool, then you can take a paint brush and just make a long, steady horizontal stroke along the lance as it turns, et voilá— a spiral stripe. The faster the turn, or the slower the stroke, the more times it spirals.
(Which is likley how the medievals would have done it with the real thing.)

I'd probably want to use a paint pen/sharpie for the stripe to give a smoother, consistent stripe — less likely to need an unsightly touch up.

Tamiya "kabuki" masking tape, which comes in widths of 1mm, 2mm and 3mm. You and vary the thickness of the spral by using different widths of tape. Paint the lance in the lighter colour first. Cut two lengths of the tape and wind them onto the lance. Peel one off, make sure the other is smoothed down and apply the second colour. It's easier than you might think and gives a better result than I can do free-hand. One I masked is easy to pick in the photo below.

Ah! Good idea!

The masking tape is what I use as well – the Tamiya brand is what I use; for the last one I did, white paint the whole lance then tape it and paint the exposed part red

When I painted a Venetian Condottieri army I painted on one side then did the connecting sections on the back. Then touched up of course.

I would argue that it doesn't need to be a spiral – bands of colour work well.

My method is the "cheat and tidy up" method.

I paint the whole lance or pole in the lighter colour first. Then, using a fine brush, I paint a wobbly spiral line of the darker colour from top to bottom. Once that's dry, I go back and neaten both edges of the spiral until it looks reasonably even.

The secret is that perfectly regular spirals are surprisingly hard to spot on a gaming figure, while slightly uneven ones are very easy to paint. At arm's length on the tabletop, nobody notices.

I've also heard of people wrapping thin thread around the pole as a guide, or drawing pencil marks before painting, but I've never been organised enough to try either.

theminiaturespage.com

‌"TMP link

I never tried even before the tremor developed.