I remember my first box of miniatures simply because it's a moment of my life wrapped in the sweetness of nostalgia. It was Christmas 2004, and there in my hands was a freshly unwrapped boxed set of the metal Heroes of the West. The next day (Boxing Day) I spent the entire day assembling them, badly admittedly, there was a nasty bend in Faramir's sword that I could never quite fix, and then it snapped, so that was disappointing. But, not as bad as the inch-thick coat of gold paint I then practically smashed on to him.
As unbelievably poorly as I painted those miniatures, I still kept a few back, even after clearing out my collection numerous times. Looking at me right now in fact, is that old metal Gandalf the White, and Legolas and Eomer, the only survivors I'm ashamed to say. There's a reason I keep these three, the quality of the paint-jobs. They outshone my early miniatures, even though they remain the worst figures I've ever painted, although Gandalf's heavy coat of Skull White still shows a little bit of the groves in the beard if you look closely enough. They were a milestone for me, a symbol of my first footsteps in miniature Middle-Earth, and they're three things I will never forget.
I'm pleased to say they also slightly inspire me. They remind me of how not to paint, how not to assemble, and most of all, how much I have improved almost a decade since. I even paint pupils and individual hairs now, that's something only my wildest dreams would have conjured back in those days. I barely managed to hit Legolas' face with Elf Flesh (its all over his hair and collar), let alone steadily dot some black in the very centre of his eye!
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