I'm new to painting minis and have tried to check out as many resources as possible online, seems like some people (including Sorastro in his painting videos) assemble w/o gluing, prime, then take apart and paint, then reassemble and glue? While assembling for a practice game with my buddy I saw some of the figures have some tight spots that might be tough to get to if glued first. Any advice for a newbie?

A lot of spots can't be seen from most angles.

If you're new and not aiming for a pro level job, I find it much easier to glue first. It also usually makes it easier to hold and move the model around while I paint.

This is my first time painting miniatures, I had them assembled, but not glued when I painted. A few times I took them apart to reach the tight areas. But as another reply said, you don't usually see the hard to reach spots

I'm doing this for the first time and am giving it a go with glueing afterwards. I'm glueing pieces like the arms to toothpicks to give me something to hold onto and it seems to be working well. I've got some old styrofoam that I'm putting the toothpicks into when I prime and when I'm not painting.

If you do paint first stick something into the post hole and don't paint the post itself. Clean any paint from the surfaces to be glued so that you are always gluing plastic to plastic. Paint in the join makes a very weak join.

I've been doing paint first(also very new at figure painting, noob thread to come soon). Have not had problems so far though the set I primed today I forgot to cover the tiny arm hole in the reanimates so we'll see how cleaning that out goes tonight.

Depends on the model.

The golem is nice and open, no hidden crevices you really need to worry about. I could see the archers, carrion lancer, or undead hero being an issue to paint since they have parts that cover up the body a bit, making it hard to get the angle to paint right.

I started off doing the whole "glue after painting" thing years and years ago.

It's only really worthwhile on particularly large models, like the Rune Golem, and that's mostly so you don't have to handle your newly painted surfaces as you move the model around.

These days I'm lazy as hell. I glue everything before I paint. You're lucky if I even bother removing mold lines. I'll just paint right over em. Nobody ever notices.

If there's a tiny underspot that will be blocked off by attaching a limb, I question the wisdom in bothering to paint that spot anyway. Nobody will ever see it.

20 minutes ago, Tvayumat said:

If there's a tiny underspot that will be blocked off by attaching a limb, I question the wisdom in bothering to paint that spot anyway. Nobody will ever see it.

This.

pretty much the only models i make an effort to remove mold lines for is Bones miniatures...because those lines are painfully visible. I painted a decent sized dragon once because i was bored, didnt even notice the mold lines until i already painted quite a bit. Having a mold line RIGHT ON HIS SHOULDER is annoying rofl.

19 hours ago, CMtheGM said:

A lot of spots can't be seen from most angles.

If you're new and not aiming for a pro level job, I find it much easier to glue first. It also usually makes it easier to hold and move the model around while I paint.

2 hours ago, Tvayumat said:

If there's a tiny underspot that will be blocked off by attaching a limb, I question the wisdom in bothering to paint that spot anyway. Nobody will ever see it.

This is what I was hoping to hear, thanks everyone!

I almost always glue first. When it comes time to basecoat (I usually use colored spray paint as a basecoat and primer in one step) I'll:

1-Stand them all up in a line and spray both sides.

2-After they've dried a bit I'll tip them all on their front, spray the back and immediately stand them up.

-3After they've dried a bit more I'll tip them on their backs, spray again and immediately stand them up again.

This almost always gets at least the base colorpaint in every crevase.

I'm just finishing up my Spearman and I've never really done any painting like this before. What I found is that I tend to get a lot of paint where I didn't mean for it to go which causes me to have to come back with another color and clean up which may leave me with something else to clean up.

Glueing after painting seemed to have helped with this alot. I don't have to worry as much about the back side of my brush hitting something or accidentally painting something at the end of my brush stroke.

It took some time to put the parts on toothpicks and I did have to clean some pegs up with a knife to make it fit but I think that it was worth it to glue after I was done painting. I shaded after glueing.

If I was better at applying the paint I want exactly where I wanted it (and keeping it off the spots where I don't) then I might feel different.

How disciplined are you?

I would say it's more important to get your whole army up and looking good than it is to have the perfect paint job on each mini. So if you really want perfect minis and have the discipline to paint in pieces, then go for it. If not, you'll be fine and almost no one will notice that the space under your Rune Golem's kilt isn't completely shaded and highlighted.

That said, painting in pieces is its own special pain. Pieces often don't fit together well if they have paint on the areas where they join other parts. If they can pressure fit together before priming, then that can work OK, but there's a lot of parts on these minis that won't stay without glue. In which case, you'll have to mask the contact patches with blue tack or tape, or something more creative before spraying.

So basically, my advice is not to bother painting in pieces, unless you really want to, or if there are important pieces on a model that are visible, but you won't be able to paint later. For example, I have a Warhammer Empire Hurricanum that has visible inside pieces that would be impossible to paint with a brush. So grumbled, swore, and painted it in parts.

The painter's friend is to go buy a pack or two of poster putty (blue tacky clay stuff for putting posters up on dorm walls and taking them down when you move out next summer). Pull off a finger-nail sized blob, stick it to something you don't intend to paint and easy to hold, and then stick the mini to it! Now you can hold it comfortably without getting paint all over your fingers, or smudging paint by picking it up when its not yet dry. You can get something with a handle or cylinder to it so that its easier to grab (I use large flat-top paint jars for most of mine, I'm going to try a new method of putting four minis on a piece of foamboard with this batch of minis). Its also great for holding minis down to cardboard if you plan on using spray primer or varnish, or for airbrushing multiple minis at the same time.

On 4/16/2017 at 0:41 PM, Tvayumat said:

I started off doing the whole "glue after painting" thing years and years ago.

It's only really worthwhile on particularly large models, like the Rune Golem, and that's mostly so you don't have to handle your newly painted surfaces as you move the model around.

These days I'm lazy as hell. I glue everything before I paint. You're lucky if I even bother removing mold lines. I'll just paint right over em. Nobody ever notices.

If there's a tiny underspot that will be blocked off by attaching a limb, I question the wisdom in bothering to paint that spot anyway. Nobody will ever see it.

Welcome to the club!

I'm no spring chicken anymore, so I feel the same way. Expediency > studio quality!

My days of OCD painting are over.

My entire 40k Necron army (with the exception of character models and instances of excessive line/flash) were done without bothering to remove mold lines. They look great, have gotten compliments, and nobody much cares about or notices the lines.

I painted individual parts. I found the models were hard to fit together period; so I just assumed I was going to be working with an exactly knife anyway

Just don't use Gorilla Glue. Trust me on this one.

I used gorilla super glue. Worked well

If you can't get to an underarm to paint, no one will ever (hopefully) take the model off the base, turn it over and laugh at you for not painting the armpit hair colour stand by strand.

2 hours ago, Amanal said:

If you can't get to an underarm to paint, no one will ever (hopefully) take the model off the base, turn it over and laugh at you for not painting the armpit hair colour stand by strand.

My problem is that there's a lot of places that are perfectly visible that I try to paint and end up putting paint all over the place while doing it. I'm trying an archer now with glued on arms and one with arms on toothpicks and the unassembled archer is much less frustrating to paint. It took a couple of tries to figure out the best way to glue the toothpick on that held well but didn't leave splintered toothpick on the model when I removed it but I've got it going pretty quickly now.

- Flatten the point on one end (rubbing on concrete or other rough surface a few times does the trick).
- Glue to a flat surface (this makes it easy to remove).
- Never glue to more than one surface (like in a corner)

After that I just stick all of the small pieces on toothpicks into a piece of styrofoam.

It's personal preference. I painted everything, even parts barely seen, because I like having a complete paint job. I glued after using gorilla super glue.