"Why? The worst wargame item you have ever painted!" Topic

Most if not all of us have painted wargame figures, wargame terrain, and other wargame related stuff that, frankly, looked awful when it was finished. (I don't want to hear about painting your garage, underpass, or pets here).

What was it that caused this particular item or unit to look so bad?

mjc

When I first started painting I used Humbroil Oils but . . . I didn't prime the figures first. Paint just didn't stick and left me with all kinds of bare metal ridges.

Frankly painting figures with oil based paint was a mistake too but back then the acrylic paint market had yet to develop.

mjc

Lack of inspiration. I no longer paint just to finish a project. Its never worth the time invested.

A bed sheet I hurriedly tried to make into a terrain "mat" – a day before the game. I wasted a lot of flock on it.

For me it was the warmaster elven dragon. I wanted to do it as a fire dragon of sorts and made it orange/red/yellow.

It turned out horribly. I don't know what was wrong but it looked like some kind of mexican fiesta dragon. I resprayed and it got painted green and looks great now. It actually was part of an army that won a Golden Demon.

Unsurprisingly my very first effort was by far the worst. Airfix Higlanders, Humbrol enamels, kid's paint-set brushes, whole lot painted in a few hours. Oh the horror.

Never had anything turn out "BAD".
Have had a lot of stuff need touch ups due to sloppiness.

A Skaven Vermin Lord. I spent hours and hours and hours painting this figure, got loads of detail, blended colors, multi-colored lightning on the gem of his staff, only to turn it over to the person who commissioned me to paint it and know it was totally destroyed a few months later when his room was forcibly "cleaned" by his parents. It made me sick.

I keep a small selection of some of my "early days" efforts just for laughs and to remind myself that I don't do so bad now. It's a good tool to encourage others also.

Probably the worst thing about them is some glossy black straps/belts and near albino skin tones. Yikes! I imagine I thought they looked good at the time, though!

I am pretty unhappy with my croc minis Snowbeast. Massive figure with great detail that got a goopy batch of spray primer and too many coats on top of that. He is destined for simple green.

A Skytrex 1/600 model of HMS Kelly, that I tried to finish in Mountbatten Pink. looked bloody awful and so was quickly repainted in a nice generic Western approaches scheme. Much nicer now (although not a model of Kelly per se)

Painted the eyes on 15mm Highlanders a tad too big…you could see the whites of their eyes from about three miles away!

Some of my early experiments with ink washes were utter disasters, turning neatly painted figures into stained, smudged nightmares. I've got better at it now.

I've had a few drybrushing disasters as well which left figures encrusted garish highlights.

GW Lizardmen, in orange & bronze. Classy.

Plastic figures. Paint was flaking off.

I bought one of these Goblin War Giant picture and I just bought a new set of GW inks the same day (having never worked with inks before that…).

Lets just say… not my finest hour(s, days…) of painting…

I'd have to go with an old Dragontooth Dwarf. Not sure there is enough talent in the world to make that mini look good, but I tried anyway and learned the hard way.

Some Perry Samurai, I tried painting all the detail and spent ages doing them – but they just looked a mess at the end.

Probably some of the old John Carter figures from… Heritage?
Some classic stuff there but others were just shapeless blobs. My paint abilities at the time didn't help at all.