The purpose of this thread is for everybody to present (preferably with a photo) and talk about their oldest, finished paper mache piece (that you still possess) and then contrast that with your most recent finished PM project.  Think of it as kind of a "where you've been and where you are now" type of thing.

I'll start things off:

To the best of my knowledge, this is the oldest paper mache project I still have.  It's an Ojibwa/Anishnabe (local Native American tribe) war club that I made for a high school project.  I had to make some kind of art thing, in addition to a report on their culture, and this is what I decided to do.  While I can't give an exact date, I'd say I was about 14-15 years old when I made this (I'm 29 now).  I didn't consider myself a sculptor in any shape or form at that time in my life, as far as art went, I was into illustration then.  The club is in fairly rough shape these days: the paint is chipping, there are several fractures that I never bothered to fix, and it's missing some bird feathers that used to be tied up near the business end.  Underneath the paint, paper strips, and glue, the shaft is made from cardboard and I used a plastic cat toy for the spherical form of the club head.



My most recent project, which I completed on August 19th (haven't made a thing since then--too busy playing new video games and goofing off in general), last month, is this mini action figure: Massimiliano Frezzato's T.M.N.T.--a robotic spoof of Kevin Eastman & Peter Laird's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, that appeared briefly in a series of graphic novels called "The Keepers of The Maser".



Contrasting the new piece with the older one: Both the sculpting and the paint work are far more sophisticated and detailed, I use much different tools/techniques than I did back then, everything I do now is on a much smaller scale (1.6 inches tall x 2.0 inches wide in this case), usually articulated (this one's got 14 joints), and I don't use underlying armatures/framework in my sculpts anymore.  While the war club is far from the best thing I've ever made, I do feel I did well on the basic shape and proportions.   And, while my materials have broadened to some extent, I still use pretty much the same stuff, minus the plastic cat toy, today that I used to make the war club all those years ago.