"Oldest project still on your painting desk?" Topic

How long has that project been clogging your painting list?

Weeks, months, years?

Jacobite thingie.
For obvious reasons. Highlanders can seemingly take forever to paint. I put in a spurt to get 40 finished for an unrealistic Moore's Creek Bridge. Kilted Highlanders shouldn't have been there. Nor with tartan trews for that matter. But they're done. But barely a third of what I really need.
This has been dragging on back way into the previous century.

Nothing actually on my desk has been there more than a year. The desk gets cleared and cleaned once in a while.

The oldest painting project with unpainted lead probably dates back to 1992. I recently got rid of the tiny handful of '80s miniatures I still had lying around.

- Ix

Some Dutch 1815 militia battalions since Feb 2018. Saw this post and today I finished them except for their battalion flags. Next oldest are nine S Model 1/72 kits, of Russian 1939 era T-35 tanks. They are on month three now.

M

Actually on the desk or near it?

of the Later 15mm Fantasy armies started @ 20 years ago

Decades.

Epic 40K Chaos Land Speeder squadron has probably been around for 22 yrs. or more-- occasionally I'll add a detail or two, but without much local interest it may be another couple of decades before it gets finished. I don't even count the 15mm Napoleonics (10 pounds or so) that haven't even come out of the factory packaging for at least 30 years.

Somehow I have things to be painted that are older than me.

Some of the ones that survived last Fall's hurricane flood have been waiting for 5-10 years. Mostly SF and VSF.

My Tremors project survived and is now at the top of my list.

All the new stuff I've bought since then will have to wait.

Dan

I still have some Rogue Trader Space Marines from about 1988… I think I am going to trade them for some Nurgle-y goodness though

I have a hundred or so of the original Old Glory ACW 28mm figures, with separate heads. They came out in about 1990 or so. Still plan to paint ‘em

I have a box of works in progress. It's a standard document storage box, sometimes called a banker's box. I'm not sure what's been in there the longest, but it's probably a die cast Hunslett ATT77 in about 1:100 scale that I a friend gave me about 10 years ago.

The Hunslett ATT77 is a wheeled vehicle used for towing airliners. It was the basis for the APC used by the Colonial Marines in Aliens.

Still have some McEwan skellies from the 70's

Back in 10 I decided to get off my duff and start painting the figures I was scooping up by the bucket load off ebay, bartertown, TMP, etc.

One of the lots included 44 primed AB/Battle Honors Greek hoplites. Previous owner had lost some of the separate arm with shield pieces and glued some wood substitutes instead.

Looking at the fact that they were 'heroic' 15s and the shield situation and considering the amount of time since I had last painted miniatures, they seemed a good start.

Got to the shields and stalled after doing a few basic. Decided my skills weren't quite up to the more devices. Got an art major niece to do a few and then she stalled.

Want back a year ago and got it down to 4 shields – started to do them with the various 'leg' devices and wasn't happy with my effort.

I may try doing some sort of stencil in the not distant future.

Amusingly I have painted up enough light and medium cavalry, archers, and psiloi to be able to field the army once the hoplites are completed.

Of course I started buying those figures in 08 so that is another couple of years for the lag.

Some Minifig French still in progress since the early 80s

Mike

Two weeks. I have a bunch of crap I haven't started yet, but once I start, I finish.

I suppose it also depends on what you mean by a "project". I finished up some Ottoman infantry at the end of last month. The cavalry that will go with them is still in the bag. So, not on the table.

Generally, things don't take more than a month.

Some old Essex Late Roman Auxiliaries – been kicking around since the 80s – time to finish these off for Dux Britanniarum. The rest of the unpainted Late Romans are in a box somewhere.

PITS army in 15mm…been hanging about for years along with an unfinished Viking army for SAGA.

Some 25mm Hinchliffe Byzantines painted in Testors enamel paints 45 years ago. I vacillate between keeping them as is and stripping them down and repainting.

Years, some Hinchliffe AWI cavalry I've had 35 years.

I just continue assembling and painting, etc. a little everyday … until I die …

I just finished a Hanoverian SYW musketeer battalion. It's about two years ago I finished the first half.

I've also got a French HYW MAA unit that I've only done 4 out of 24 and it's soon a year since I did those very 4.

And Swedish musketeer battalion is about half done with 15 finished. And 5 have been half painted for 8 months.

An aquarium building of a two story bricked ruin that is primed and ready to finish.

Would probably take 30 minutes at most…

1981 Figures for AD&D

Some Ral Partha colonials from the Early '80s

A solitary SYW Prussian fusilier battalion that is half-done and 10 years old

My oldest pieces go back to the late 70"s. Just finished some stuff I bought at my first Historicon in 1989.

3mm ACW two years.

A large ceramic turtle for a neighbor. Well former neighbor now but its been about 7 years and still going.

Napoleonics.

I started miniature playing with the ACW. That is all I played for years. Everyone else had Napoleonic figures so I didn't need to buy and paint any. Now that I think, (and hope) have found a set of rules I like, I plan to get underway.

2 months. A rarity for me. If it makes it to the desk it gets painted.

Grenadier Fellowship of the Rings from 81 or so

Vikings

The oldest part painted figure actually on my painting table is the 1980s Jhary a Conel figure from the GW Eternal Champion set.
I started painting it when the figures first came out but for years it has sat part painted in a box of unfinished stuff. I found it when looking for something else and will paint it one day, even though I don't expect it will ever get used in a game. He was one of my favourite Moorcock characters.

I have some Hinton Hunt Old Guard on my table which I started in 1972… I will never finish them since they were painted with Imrie Risley enamel paints which are long out of production (although I have seen a conversion chart for Vallejo).