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Hey Dakkarians

I have been browsing the articles and have noticed alot of the painters leave pieces off the miniature (head, arms, weapons etc) , paint all parts then connect at the end.

I just wanted to put it out there and see if this is a widely used (for lack of a better word) method.

Cheers!

I think it is something almost all 'good' painters do, with a few notable exceptions. Many pieces can only be painted before assembly.

One way to do this is to assemble miniatures (especially vehicles) with rubber cement or blue tac, so you can assemble and dissassemble at will. You then glue everything together when your done.

depending on the paintscheme and the pose of the miniature i usually leave the weapons off for my spacemarines,

if lets say, you paint black templars, i'd leave the weapons and the shoulderpads off. the shoulderpads will receive white primer, the weapons and bodies will receive black primer.

i then paint everything separately and assemble it at the end.

now with my paintbrush i build everything except for the weapon, that ill add at the end

It depends greatly on the model and pose. Things like orcs with just some hand weapons are fine to assemble up then paint.

Things like Bretonnian knights are 3 separate parts: knight, horse, shield.

Sometimes heads can be painted separately if there is something special to be done with it, like airbrushing it a different color than the rest of the model or what not.

For space marines I leave the bolters and backpacks off so that I can paint what is underneath, so that when someone picks it up they don't see "backstage". It maintains the illusion of being a real thing.

I find its faster, I'm not a great painter, but when painting my Ork army, for the boys I paint the body and torso on the base, and paint the arm weapon and heads separately.

It depends on the model for me. For my average troop choice I just assemble the model and paint it, For SGT, Exarcs, and IC (stuff that really stands out in an army) I paint the parts and then assemble it.

edited for idiotic spelling errors

Partial assembly is definitely a common practice. It's the only way to reach every part of some miniatures (as mentioned, not every model/pose has inaccessible areas, so not every model benefits from it), although that doesn't concern every painter. It seems that most painters that always build fully before painting are only shooting for TTQ, the idea being that "if the brush can't reach it, the eye can't see it," which only holds true at arm's length.

Personally, I've been partially assembling models more and more, over time. Even AoBR slugga boys, which are relatively open sculpts, benefit, as they're easier for me to paint with the arms and head left off, even though I could get a brush to everything, otherwise.

with my current SM project:

I have the legs bodies and head as 1 piece (green) and then the arms and shouldpads still on sprues for cleaning and painting (stone).

when I get to my tanks I am thinking about doing everything but the turrets and sponsons seperate so I can magnetise and clean/paint them.