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It's still not finished. I started it in 1993.

My first army was the start of my Tau (now re-painted) and thankfully for the internet and viewers at home there are no pictures of them. It looked like I colored them with a crayon held between my toes. Thankfully they're covered up and gone, never again to blight the surface of the earth with their existence.

my first army was ugly.. with really horribal colour contrast and some i didn't even prime... yer that worked out well

I never have a fully painted army for myself...

Hoping my Orks would be finished .... eventually....

LunaHound wrote:
I never have a fully painted army for myself...

Hoping my Orks would be finished .... eventually....

Haha... Sadly we are on the EXACT same boat... I hope my orks can be eventually done too... D:

At least you appear to paint more consistantly and often then me hehe... and you paint alot better!!! And youve tempted me to start a mek army with way to many kans, dreads, and new fw mega dreads...

Yeah, mine sucked. I had a break for 18 months, and then got back into it. Ive been slowly revisiting and repainting the old models at the same time as painting new ones.

You keep improving, so keep at it!

Neither of my first armies are actually finished but recently, I found some of the first GW mini's I ever painted. Absolutely god-awful!!
My skills have gotten considerably better over the years such that I feel like going back and repainting all the older stuff.

Lately, I feel like I've hit a plateau with my work and don't quite know how to improve.

Buttlerthepug wrote:

LunaHound wrote:
I never have a fully painted army for myself...

Hoping my Orks would be finished .... eventually....

Haha... Sadly we are on the EXACT same boat... I hope my orks can be eventually done too... D:

At least you appear to paint more consistantly and often then me hehe... and you paint alot better!!! And youve tempted me to start a mek army with way to many kans, dreads, and new fw mega dreads...

We should do some sort of cooperative painting things , where we encourage each other to get our Orks done :<

In the days of old, or "B.F." as it is also known (Before Foundation), my models were of terrible quality. But I didn't think that at the time, though, being a kid and all. In fact, the first army I ever painted has so far been the only army I've ever painted - More than six years ago! Since then I've always strived to further my painting skills, and I am now in the process of doing something big. All of these years of improving my skills as a painter have to show something for it!

I've still kept my old painted models, just to look back at them and think: "Man, I've come a long way!" or "Was I really that bad?" ...And I've still got a looong way to go yet, too! (It never ends! ARRRGH!)

Here is my first ever figure painted:

You all can be the judge of how well it looks.

That looks decent enough to me. I only just started painting about a year and a half ago. It was initially to help pass the time at work on Saturdays. So I only painted one day a week. I tried painting at home but the light was just awful.

My first squad was a mob of 20 boyz. Just did a basic color job. Red shirt/armor plates, brown pants, basic green skin, and plain bolt gun weapons. No washes or details or anything. I have since gone back and touched up teeth and did the straps on the torso in a dark brown. Mostly I was limited by paint choices. I only had a few basic colors.

I hated the GW brushes. They felt like they had no spring to them. I would lay down a brush stroke and the bristles would stay curved afterward. I have tried a bunch of brushes since then and I really like the Reaper Master series.

I have only hand painted about 100 figures in the last year or so using different techniques, but I can already see a difference in quality.

Yeah, my first army sucked...
My idea of a painted guardian was drowing it in enchanted blue, then dabbing sunburst yellow on the helmet. *shudder*

Now, my stuff is a bit better, since I discovered the magic of ink ^^
I will say, I was rather upset when they discontinued purple ink though.

Couple pics from my first army:





Course, I've been painting minis for many years prior to starting GW armies. My first figures - that's a very different story (painted by a beardless nine-year-old)

My first army started with the Space Marines from the 2nd edition box set. I painted them with supplies I had left over from my days of building model cars and planes. It was all Testors gloss paints and the white handled Testors brushes. Of course at the time I probably thought they were very well done and the coolest models on the table top, but I'm sure they were absolutely wretched.

I am too ashamed to show my first.....

My first paint job was 10 years ago, and it was awful. Actually, I wouldn't say "paint." My method back then was more like frosting a cake

Painting my army is something I am dreading...
I recently (about three weeks ago) decided to get back into 40K, and I am attempting to get a playable army put together by... this Sunday...
I went batcrazy on ebay and soon (tomorrow) I should have the first of my AOBR boys. I am still converting/scratch building my vehicles, and by the time I am done modeling, I should have:

20 grots
40-50 boys
2 trukks
1 battlewagon
1 dread
3 killa kans
3 bikes
10-15 nobs
1 warboss
1 big mek

The shear amount of possible suck makes me shudder. Does anyone have ideas for speed painting orks?

Well here it goes. The Striking Scorpion is my very first painting of a model. I did it when I was 10. Beside is my Farseer, which is there for comparison. Even though the Farseer is pretty old, it's still one of the models that I have actually spent time on. I learned I need to work on gemstones

Don't be disheartened by the quality of the stuff that has been shown! Only the people who have armies which have been actually 'painted' seem to have dared put them up - mine were a hundred times worse...

My first army wasn't as bad as my 2nd. First army was was painted over a white undercoat with watery paint(I didn't know you had to shake them) and it was almost like using the new washes, it looked not great but not bad ether.

My second army on the other hand was base coated Space wolf Grey(from back when they had it in a spray paint can) I then added a little black and badmoon yellow over top and goblin green bases, to satisfy the three colour rule and boom they were on the field.

Now 14 years later I take my time and make sure they look good, but sometimes I look back to when I could paint an army in a couple of hours and now when I might spend more than that on 1 hq Figure and wish I cared as little now about how my army looked as I did back then.

still working on it - the necrons will probally be done first - too many orks

LunaHound wrote:

Buttlerthepug wrote:

LunaHound wrote:
I never have a fully painted army for myself...

Hoping my Orks would be finished .... eventually....

Haha... Sadly we are on the EXACT same boat... I hope my orks can be eventually done too... D:

At least you appear to paint more consistantly and often then me hehe... and you paint alot better!!! And youve tempted me to start a mek army with way to many kans, dreads, and new fw mega dreads...

We should do some sort of cooperative painting things , where we encourage each other to get our Orks done :<

Haha! That would be intense like camping... get it? in tents... anyhow... That would be fun... Im just starting to paint mah FW chaos dragon now so thats like my main priority... but I would totally be up for it since Im sure Ill want breaks from painting my dragon... which happens to have a large number of areas that I am currently painting which are green... hehe... at least Ill have good practice eh?

O.o we have totally gone off topic... you should pm if you actually want to do something where we can paint the same units or something... try and actually get an army done!

Does anyone know what a good starter army for painting is? According to the staff at Games Workshop Morley, the only starting army, second, third or consecutive armies are the Space Marines.

Boss 'eadbreaka wrote:Does anyone know what a good starter army for painting is? According to the staff at Games Workshop Morley, the only starting army, second, third or consecutive armies are the Space Marines.

Sounds about right

In terms of painting, I would assume they are the easiest since they generally have lots of large flat areas. Necrons can be drybrushed in their entirety. So that is (I suppose) a bonus.

Funnily enough my first army(and my only one to date)was painted rather well ...i don't wanna show off or anything, but i'm a bit of a natural i guess(aaaah don't hit me!!! ) my catachans have everything from weathering and chips on vehicles to wash,highlight glaze on infantry....it's weird but they look better than the display catachans gw uses...i'll try to upload some pics soon!

My first, and still current army, are my Blood Ravens. My first 10 man squad was mechrite, bleached bone, and black, put on in what can only be described as a childish attempt.

Since then I have stripped and repainted them once I got decent at it, but no one starts out great. Even the great painters on Dakka started off globbing the paint onto their models. Eventually, through practice and help, people get better.

Just practice. And have fun doing it. And whatever you do, do not get rid of or strip your first set of models. Keep at least a squad of them around, even if you don't play them.

Cause one day you will be working on getting some final hightlights on something insanely complicated and not be happy with it at all. When that happens you will have that first paint job around to remind you how far you have progressed.

Cheers

The shear amount of possible suck makes me shudder. Does anyone have ideas for speed painting orks?

My tau army sucked so bad im stripping it now and repaint thewhole thing. lol I was told to use 2 base coats of primer wich took a lot of the detail away.

the_emperors_renegade wrote:
The shear amount of possible suck makes me shudder. Does anyone have ideas for speed painting orks?

I didn't speed paint mine. Took over 20 minutes per figure! But man I'm proud of it now. (That was my third army)

Well I spend and average of an hour painting up one crummy Ork Boy! How do you think I feel?

My first figure was just horrible, first time you ever paint figures never goes well Recently found some of my old figures, almost puked.