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I've only been painting for about 9 months now, but I've gotten to the point where my oldest units don't look as good as what I'm currently painting. This isn't too bad as all of need to do to make my guys "presentable" is to highlight a few places. That being said though, does anyone else know the pain of having a model you once were proud of end up looking less than alright when looking back?

I think anyone that spends time on the modeling and painting side of the hobby knows this exact feeling.

If you didn't glob on the paint too thick then you should be able to go over and shade and highlight the older models to bring them up to a level you like.

Failing that dump them in a good paint stripper for plastics and re-do them (that's what I keep doing with all my models that I painted in the 90's).

I don't, but if I wasn't such an erratic painter and kept more of my models, I probably would looking back at some of the things I had.

Though I do also tend to try new things out and such with each model, so a lot of times there's a challenge in making similarly painted models not stand out too much from each other. Which has lead me to have a desire and change them all to look more uniform D:

I know my old paint jobs look like gak (more gak than my current stuff) but I find it kind of cool to see the progression between my early stuff and my later work.

Yeah, I actually still have my very first miniatures ever. The plastic Fellowship of the Ring from the Maria starter set. Its a good morale lifter to look back where you started.

I’m OK with my old marines. I might have come a long way, but they still more-or-less fit in with the army.

My Eldar bug me though. I painted my old ones during my “black wash everything” phase. I much prefer cleaner lines these days. Some day I might strip them and start over, but right now I’m trying to get more painted so I can field them. This leaves me with a definite style break.

I keep the very first model I ever painted, but I do repaint the other ones if they no longer look good.

All the time. I ended up selling my first painted models because I wasn't happy with how they looked anymore when compared to my more recent ones. Generally, I am a lot happier with my painted models now that I've had a few more years of painting experience.

I recently "touched up" about 40 marine bodies of various types to bring them up to my current painting level. It was nice actually, because I often struggle to achieve a decent paint job, and have always thought of myself as a terrible painter. I literally lined up dozens of models and could see a wave of skill progression. I'm touching up a few vehicles now.

Oddly enough, about 2 years ago I finished a terminator chaplain, and he turned out way better than anything I have done before or since. I wont lie, it was a combination of stars aligning, mystical Gods of patience being bountiful, and pure luck. Honestly, I doubt I could reproduce that quality of paint even after two more years of "practice".

I've repainted my entire Eldar army twice, but my first four models have remained untouched.

They never get fielded, and they look awful, but I love them.

I always thought about touching up models that I first started painting many moons ago. One of these days I might just strip them and start all over. Repainted them in batches of 10.

When closing in on your 7th company of marine models, painted well enough is well enough. I just move on.

There are armies I painted years ago that I straight up don't play anymore because I don't like how their paint has held up. Hell, I've even got some duplicates, like the Dark Angels I painted in 2007 and the ones I painted more recently that look so much better. I think it's pretty common, especially with sticklers for detail like myself.

It's called The Artist's Curse. Whenever you make art, you learn as you make it - so by the time you finish working on something, the stuff you did at the beginning already looks rubbish... and the cycle continues.