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How do you hold small models or bits as you paint them?

I've watched a bunch of painting tutorials and people seem to have some sort of cylinder topped with some sort of putty. What do you use? What exactly is that putty?

Thanks!

It is common called "poster tack" and it is used to hold posters and the like on the wall temporarily, usually in schools (we used it all the time in the late 80s/early 90s when I was in grade school). It is also called "blue tack," but not all of it is blue. You can pick it up at arts & crafts stores in the art/school supplies section and also at Home Depot or Lowe's where they keep the glues and other household adhesives.

What I do for some small bits is a little bit of poster tack stuck on the end of a small balsa wood stick. I also will pin the feet of models and stick them in a large cork stopper. Another thing I do, especially when airbrushing small pieces, is attach painters tape sticky side up to my cutting mat and stick what I want to paint on it.

I use blu-tack or equivalent. A small blob on the back of the item in question (where it will make contact with the model).

TL;DR: This video from girl painting on youtube.

Blu-tack on top of one of these. You can swivel the model with your thumb which helps keep it steady as the rest of your hand remains stable. I much prefer it to blu-tac on a cork, cork cup or paint tub. When airbrushing, I'll sometimes use blu-tac on my hand drill which has the same thumb-rotate benefit but on a much narrower profile. Better for airbrushing, but less comfortable for holding for sbstantial periods of time. When airbrushing multiple models at once (ie. priming or base coating a squad) , they're all blu-tacced onto corks which are easy to come by ; )

When spending a significant amount of time on a single model, I highly recommend the toothpick holder I linked above (or somethign similar). Wide enough to hold comfortably, and only needing to move your thumb is noticeably more convenient to turn the model over a painting session.

If you're airbrushing a bunch of small bits, you can use double sided sticky tape on a flat surface too, I always do this for shoulder pads for example.

Blu tack on the end of a paintbrush is usually my method of choice for shoulderpads.

Depends on the part and material (weight being the main consideration - what works for plastic may not work as well for metal).

Based models go on a paint bottle (I find craft paint bottles more comfortable than GW-style stubby pots) with poster tack. Unbased models get a long pin in the foot, which will be clipped down and used for the eventual base attachment. Lightweight plastics can be shoved into a wine cork, heavier metals are liable to spin around during handling if I rely solely on friction, so I hold them in a pin vice for a stronger grip.

Limbs and loose bits have the greatest degree of variety - weight is usually less of an issue with these smaller parts, so I mostly consider surface area, part thickness, and the eventual attachment method. SM shoulder pads have a broad inner surface that will be glued, so some poster tack on the inside and a dowel or paintbrush handle works well. Limbs to be pinned are held by those pins, just like the bodies. Round toothpicks are about the same size as the pegs on snap-fit kits like AoBR models, so those get a flush-cut toothpick superglued (easy to snap off and clean up, afterward) to the pegs or simply shoved into the holes. Flat plastic joints are a tossup between a superglued toothpick or a temporary pin, largely determined by part thickness (don't want to drill right through). In either case, I may include a blob of poster tack anyway, to act as a mask for the area that will eventually be glued.

I didn't start using poster tack until about 2 years ago. Now I feel like an idiot for waiting so long to try it. There are so many uses for this stuff that I have a big ball of it that I keep at my work desk at all times. It gets broken up and reformed over and over.

Depends what it is really.
I paint with everything assembles.

The only small items i have to paint are additional hands with different weapon options, in which case, these have magnets on anyway so i simply hold them on a metal strip by the magnet.

But most people will use poster-tac / Blu-tac.

I use blu-tac on top of an empty asthma inhaler, as shown:



I use these inhalers because I get through a few of them a year, they're solid and easy to hold.
Before then I used the old style GW paint pots with the white flip top lids, but really you just need something you can easily hold - not too thin so your fingers get cramp, not too fat so you can't get a good grip on it.

Blu-tac or its equivalent is easy to get throughout the world from stationers and supermarkets.

Another option is blu-tack and fiilm canisters, with the blu-tack and figure adhered to the bottom.

If you have a film developer or camera shop nearby, they'll generally give you a handful of these for free. You'll want to tape/glue a coin to the inside bottom (lid), if attaching heavier miniatures.




I like these because they are the right width for me and they'll take glue well, too, for the more unruly miniatures that fight the blu-tack.

I imagine the paint pots would work well, too.

I am just newb without any empty ones to use, and as an ork painter, I like to have a dozen of them handy.

I use blu-tack on cheap plastic shot glasses.

Works well enough

Walmart didn't have Blu-Tac but they did have something similar, so I picked that up. I then ran to Menards and got a 3 ft long 1 1/2 diameter dowel rod and a 3 ft 1x1 board. I cut the dowel into 10, 2" sections (plenty of holders and some left over). I then cut the boards into 12" sections. I also bought double sided tape and I put that on the boards. I will put my Ork Boys on the board to anchor them as I airbrush them.

I, like most, use blue-tc. For the base, I have a collection of old dried-up Polly S paint pots from 20-plus years ago that I have held on to and used for painting handles ever since:

All I know is I want one of these to hold models now

.

I pin the feet on all my miniatures, with paper clips. Then set them on a sheet of styrofoam. I pick them and hold them by the paperclips when I'm painting. This allows you to do your scenic bases separately with better detail. It also allows you better reach and angle on the bottom of the miniature. An absolute must if you are doing zenithal highlighting.

I blutack them to old paint pots. If it's something I'm just painting up quickly and don't care about it being perfect I might just hold it by hand.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ScootyPuffJunior wrote:
It is common called "poster tack" and it is used to hold posters and the like on the wall temporarily, usually in schools (we used it all the time in the late 80s/early 90s when I was in grade school). It is also called "blue tack," but not all of it is blue.

It's called blutack because that's the main brand available in the UK, Australia, probably elsewhere as well. It's kind of like saying "use a Sharpie" or "pass me a Kleenex".

I slice a cork in half, stick in some copper wire either bent at the end, or inserted in a small drilled holes to hold the parts, and use some superglue. When ready you just snap it off or pull it out.

Yeah I use blu-tack as well, if the model piece was super tiny though, like smaller than a troop model head, I'd probably use tweezers to hold it still.