A handy tool for painting, and my current distraction painting project

Sometimes an idea hits for a handy tool for painting, model making, scratch building, etc. In my case it was my wife coming home from work with spring clips, the kind used to bind a stack of papers together...

This is one of those clips, available at most office stores, Wal-Mart, and other places pretty cheap. Add a little paper towel or napkin and it grips a figs slotta base tab firmly and has almost zero slippage.

 For a few dollars you can get several of these in various sizes, from super tiny to 'who needs one that big'. In this case I'm using one that is roughly 1 1/2" long, and have a 2 1/2" one for 'big' projects. Overall this works about as well as cork, paint pots, and other methods of keeping fingers off the paint/fig so that skin oils don't screw things up.

For those who play Malifaux you will likely recognize my current distraction painting project, Lady Hammerstrike. I picked her up to work on my blending techniques, as I'd gotten a bit out of practice having been doing a lot of power armored figs, and heavily clothed figs. It never hurts to work on areas you know are not being used as much, in order to keep your skills sharp. And it doesn't hurt to have a neat fig like this to work with. Wyrd sure make some great figs in their line. I plan on getting their Wendigo, and a few other figs soon, if for no other reason than I think they are really neat figs.

Here are some pics of my work in progress on Lady Hammerstrike.

Until next time!