Painting parts obscured by weapons

[Syphon]

I'm sure we've all been there. You assemble a spearman or pikeman and he looks cool, but his spear or pike is in front of his chest, making it hard for you to reach the armour behind. How do you solve this?

I know of multiple ways but I'd like to hear frmo you what works best. I'm hardly the best painer so I need as much help as I can get.

[Rowsdower]

With some models [from any range, game or army] its best to leave off the offending weapon/shield and paint it separately.

[Zygmund]

Painting separately is good. Something that I always do with e.g. shields.

With spear shafts over the chest, I've simply painted very carefully with a sharp brush.

If the shaft practically touches the chest, so that you cannot see the chest, I don't see a need to paint the chest.

You need a dark undercoat so that the unpainted spot doesn't flicker in the eye. If you painted with a light undercoat, you need to darken the spot before starting to paint for real.

-Z

[brr-icy]

paint the chest first and touch up the spear afterwards, I go by if i can't see it with the shield/spear on, no one else can either

[Jmash]

I have the same dilemma. With my Guardsmen I would glue the left arm but leave the lasgun (right) arm off so I could paint the chest beneath, always worked fine for me.

HOWEVER...

...I recently read/watched something about various painting techniques (can't remember exactly what or where it was) and realised that painting in such a way sometimes creates complications with the highlights and shading etc. depending on how swish and realistic you want your results to be.

As an example if you leave the arms off, you can get at the chest and the armpits to paint them all the way up to a highlight stage i.e. they get full-light exposure. However when you whack the arms on, these areas are then covered and so in reality would be shaded and should maybe be left as the darker/midtone instead...

It's a bit 'high brow' admittedly, I was always happy with the results on my IG so it's currently a toss up for what I'll do on my Empire guys. :unsure:

Arms off = easier for painting.

Arms on = more realistic in terms of shading results.