Hobby philosophy: old and new paint jobs

Here’s a little old/new paint job comparison. It’s not night and day, but I can see the benefit of experience!

From left to right, the Infiltrators are July 2023, May 2020, July 2023; Chaplains are July 2020, July 2023.

I put in a couple sleepless nights getting the three new models ready for a 40k game. It was great to get back to painting Blood Angels!

The biggest changes are attempting proper edge highlighting, pin washes rather than all-over washes on armor, and being sparing with the final highlights. My brush control isn’t where I’d like it to be yet, but it has improved.

Thinking about how these will look in play, older paint jobs mixed with newer ones, reminded me of something I wanted to get up here on Yore for posterity.

A few years back I saw a post on Twitter that has quietly become one of my miniature-painting hobby touchstones. (I wish I’d taken a screenshot!) It was a photo of thousands of points of 40k models from the same faction, some of which were quite clearly painted differently than the rest.

The poster noted that those were his older models, and that instead of being frustrated they didn’t match he looked at it like this: It’d be sad if they didn’t look any different, because that would mean he’d never made any progress as a painter.

I love that.

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