Year in Review: Figures Painted

I really did not set out a goal for the number of figures I wanted to get painted at the beginning of 2025.  What I did make as a recurring goal was to paint more figures than purchased.  Even without a goal on the number of figures painted, 879 figures crossed over from unpainted to painting in 2025.  Not bad.  On the painting more than I buy front, I still came out with a reduction in The Lead Pile of 481 figures.  Not as substantial as the 2024 result of -945 figures but respectable.  Had I not succumbed to some late year purchases, totals would have been more in line with 2024.  I plan to keep up the effort of reducing The Lead Pile in 2026.  Wish me luck.

Looking back through the Painting Log over the last 32 years, the last two years have shown a gradual decrease from the 1,000 figures or more painting output.  Still, a good variety of projects saw some activity to explore a bit later.  For figures painted, one foot, one gun, and one cavalry figure each count as one.  No increased counts for horse and rider.   

Let's examine the 2025 figure counts in more detail.

Monthly Totals
As the chart below shows, much of 2025 averaged a monthly output of about 60 figures.  Not helped out by the big drops in May and October.  As is typical of my seasonal painting output, production began to pick up as the year closed out.  January and September saw big spikes up in production.  As seen in the September/October bars, a big increase in one month is often followed by a drop in the next.  A big push in one month is likely followed by exhaustion, I suppose.  

Totals by Era and Scale
Switching from the monthly bar chart to a pie chart, the total effort given to the SYW project continued into 2025.  Nearly 30% (259) of all figures painted were in this period.  While the FPW project popped into second place in 2024, 2025 saw FPW take top honors with 288 figures painted.  Biblicals rounded out the top 3 with 119 figures painted.  After several games featuring the Reconquista project hitting the table in 2025, 49 additional figures were added into the collection as my motivation was high to push out just a few more units.  I managed to almost deplete The Lead Pile of these figures.  Well, not quite as successful as first thought.  I recently uncovered about a dozen packs of Artizan and Crusader figures for the Reconquista.

Translating actual figure counts to Painting Points, the 25/28mm projects see some gains in their capture of the overall percentages.  Good to see the Great Italian Wars project climb out of obscurity from the "Other" category.

When the counts are broken out by figure size (scale), it is no surprise that the emphasis on painting 15/18mm SYW and FPW figures pushed the weight to that figure size.  As in 2024, more than 60% of all production was in the 15/18mm figures sizes.  The chart below illustrates that nearly 64% of all figures painted fall into the 15/18mm classification.

When these actual figure counts are translated to Painting Points, 25/28mm figures shift the emphasis and effort to their side of the painting ledger.  Now, almost 57% of effort is concentrated into the 25/28mm projects.

In summary, 2025 was a solid year at the painting desk.  2025 saw a slight reduction in figures painted from 2024 but not much change, really, especially since 2025 saw more 25/28mm figures painted than in 2024.  What about goals for 2025?  Well, that is something to ponder another time.