Painting Handle Vs Paint Pot Handle

For a while now I have been using paint pots as a base for my figures whilst painting them. It makes the painting process much easier. It keeps my fingers off the figure I'm working on, especially the head. You can get better angles with the brushes with a figure on top of a paint pot.

For  preference I use the older GW paint pots (pictured below). At one point I used to turn them upside down as the lip around the base of the pot fits around a 2p base quite nicely. I did try corks and bits of wood, maybe ten years ago but these didn't really seem to work. Unless you are the kind of painter that pins figures to bases corks do not seem to work so well. Bits of wood did not seem to do much at all.

It's big

Over time I have made up quite a sizable collection of empty of empty GW pots. At any one there are probably forty pots on the workbench. Of course you have to add plenty of Blue Tac and this needs to be replaced every now and again. Blue Tac, being what it is, is not especially tacky and things will fall off if you don't press them down hard enough and even then, they can still fall off.

About a 20mm base

The painting handle has a lot more positive pressure on the base. I could see a figure being knocked out of it but is seems unlikely that it would just fall out. It's a good size to fit in your hand and is a little more comfortable to hold. It has more heft to it with a fairly balanced centre of gravity. This extra weight might not be so good if you have to hold on to it for  a few hours.

And this one is about 50mm

All in all the painting handle is pretty good. I've had a go painting with it and it works well. In the round, the handle beats a paint pot every time but only just by a fraction. In the round, paint pots are free (well kind of) and the painting handle costs £5. To my mind, if you are the kind of painter who focuses on quality not quantity (really not me) or concentrating on a single figure then this is a worthwhile investment. If you are painting an army in a batch of ten figures or more, I am not sure that you would want to be buying ten of these or swapping the figure out every time.