I started painting in 1997 as a way to pass the time and because the friends I made after university played 40K.  In the beginning I was worse than many of the 'beginning' pictures I see posted on the net.  I am not ashamed of this but it is interesting to note how far someone can progress in a short period of time.  I have very few of my 'original' figures as I repainted most of them or used them as test spray figures 

Humble Beginnings

1997-1998

So I searched and searched for an example of some of my first work and here is the figure I came up with.  It was in the bottom of some box in my room and is a stunning display of how far I have come.  At the time I did this I only had Tamyia paints [yuck!] and a fine detail pen!  I laugh to look at it, but it is cool non the less.

These are some of my earliest chaos conversions.  I noticed from a playing point of view that chaos trolls are very important and since there are no figures for them I made my own.  Picture is taken with a 35mm camera.

My original army for 40K was repainted from white to black.  This character model was the force commander for my army and I remember being so proud of the paint job.  Picture is taken with a 35mm camera.

Akatomi was my first Death Co. chaplin back in 2nd ed. 40K.  As you can see his wargear is standard as I wasn't too advanced in my sculpting and converting at this stage.  Picture is taken with a 35mm camera.

These chaos warriors were done in late 1998 and finished in early 1999.  They are a part of my Chaos Warrior army for WHFB.  I tried to stay away from the dark brooding look and let the models convey the evil of the figure.  The banner, interestingly enough, is made from tooth paste tube.

More pics of the Early Years can be found here.