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Particularly two handed polearms, either sci-fi or fantasy?

I've taken to painting things black, sometimes boltgun with highlights, but I'm never
sure quite how far to take things. Sometimes I go with my standard red-brown wood
color, but that doesn't always look right. Some goblin players I see with red or other
colors on the spears.

Any advice would be appreciated.

I like using a dark leathery orange.

Some shade of wood brown.

you can go with a lacquered colour as well; paint them a solid colour, then gloss varnish.

Or do what I did with my Lizardmen; give them all bamboo poles for their spear hafts.

Did you model them as bamboo, Defenstrator?

Depending on army, period, and shaft material the shaft could be almost any colour.

For example, plain wood, varnished wood, dirty unvarnished wood, painted wood, or wood covered in ornamental fabric (guard units only.)

For fantasy/SF your choices are even wider.

I should pick a theme that matches the army. For instance a Skaven army would probably have a variety of ratty looking shafts with some stolen mixed in, while an Empire army would have regular colours for different units. Brettonian would have knights' and sergeants' spears painted in heraldic or livery colours, while the peasants would have dirty plain wood.

I paint either mithril silver (metal shaft), bleached bone, (eldar?), or snakebite leather (wooden or synthetic material).

Kilkrazy wrote:Depending on army, period, and shaft material the shaft could be almost any colour.

For example, plain wood, varnished wood, dirty unvarnished wood, painted wood, or wood covered in ornamental fabric (guard units only.)

For fantasy/SF your choices are even wider.

I should pick a theme that matches the army. For instance a Skaven army would probably have a variety of ratty looking shafts with some stolen mixed in, while an Empire army would have regular colours for different units. Brettonian would have knights' and sergeants' spears painted in heraldic or livery colours, while the peasants would have dirty plain wood.

Cool.

Do you highlight hafts?

Ive found that for wood or to get a bone grain the coolest thing to do is paint it a bone/wood color. Then wash it once, then using a brown wash (devlan for you citadel guys?) I dip a really stiff bristle brush into the wash, and then brush fairly hard so the hard bristles separate. Do that a couple times and the spots where the wash stick, looks like a wood grain or boney finish
Thats just to help you on the non colored or non metal shafts lol

malfred wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:Depending on army, period, and shaft material the shaft could be almost any colour.

For example, plain wood, varnished wood, dirty unvarnished wood, painted wood, or wood covered in ornamental fabric (guard units only.)

For fantasy/SF your choices are even wider.

I should pick a theme that matches the army. For instance a Skaven army would probably have a variety of ratty looking shafts with some stolen mixed in, while an Empire army would have regular colours for different units. Brettonian would have knights' and sergeants' spears painted in heraldic or livery colours, while the peasants would have dirty plain wood.

Cool.

Do you highlight hafts?

Sometimes, if it is an individual character figure. A line of lighter colour along the top or side, maybe.

Most of my spearshafts are in large ancients armies where the detail on individual figures is less important than the whole (especially in 15mm.)

Even in 28mm a realistic thickness of shaft is pretty thin and you can't get a lot of detail onto it.

I usually replace metal shafts with wire. Recently I have started to experiment with carbon fibre rod for flagpoles, and I may do it for spears too.

I like doing a wooden look, but I do it with the old Chestnut wash over Snakebite Leather. Makes a really cool mahogony color.

I'm experementing right now with a speckled obsidian, and I've done plain obsidian before (black paint with a gloss varnish).

Malfred wrote:Did you model them as bamboo, Defenstrator?

I didn't, as I figured trying to add half a dozen raised rings to spears of 30 or 40 saurus would be too time consuming I just painted the entire haft a moderate green (goblin, iirc), then added rings of goblin/scorpion green, followed by even smaller concentric rings of straight scorpion green. It turned out half-decent, particularly when viewed as the pike hedge it should be. I always enjoyed the idea of a bunch of naked lizardmen with pointy rocks on the end of bamboo poles beating the tar out of a bunch of chaos warriors armed with steel plate and forged weapons. Which they regularly did.

I would just go for some wood color, or for a chaos sorc, maybe some strange, glowing color.

What about sci-fi weapons like Thunderhammers and Singing Spears?

The Defenestrator wrote:I didn't, as I figured trying to add half a dozen raised rings to spears of 30 or 40 saurus would be too time consuming I just painted the entire haft a moderate green (goblin, iirc), then added rings of goblin/scorpion green, followed by even smaller concentric rings of straight scorpion green. It turned out half-decent, particularly when viewed as the pike hedge it should be. I always enjoyed the idea of a bunch of naked lizardmen with pointy rocks on the end of bamboo poles beating the tar out of a bunch of chaos warriors armed with steel plate and forged weapons. Which they regularly did.

Any chance of a pic of the bamboo, Defenestrator, as that sounds pretty cool.

I do them in metallics, often glazed with another colour if fitting.

For anything sci-fi I just pick a color I like that fits the model. I always highlight though, usually with two layers over the base color to drive home the curved aspect, with a wash overtop to tie it together. I find that small staves or poles tend to lose their rounded look otherwise.

I usually dont like using metal for hilts and hafts, 'cept for certain THs (terminator). The '08 GD model with a TH has a fabric/leather haft already modelled on it though.