I have been making models since the early 70's, I have no idea what my first kit was but I can clearly remember a Mig 15 on a blister card, a Fokker triplane in a bag and a SAAB Draken painted blue and green from tall Airfix paint bottles, I probably still have the bottles in the loft.
As most children of my decade know the fun was going into town Saturday, buying a kit and having it assembled and painted before bed time or if you had massive amounts of patience before bed time Sunday night.
I guess something more important happened as I didn't start kit building again till the mid 80's, LS 1:1 scale firearms and Tamiya 1:6 scale motorbikes, the bikes I started making for myself but ended up selling them to bikers then making them to order, the sparkies at work making small circuit boards so the bikes had working lights and indicators, again something got in the way of model building, possibly the discovery of alcohol, so that chapter closed.
A chance meeting in a model shop in Reading resulted in my buying a Halcyon Predator kit, the owner of the shop was interested in the end result, so a couple of weeks later I returned with the finished model, he was impressed, he then bought the Predator and gave me a stash of his kits to build and paint and paid me to do it, then more customers asked to have their kits built and painted and they paid, I was being paid to build and paint kits, result, so my period of figure building started, unfortunately the owner died so that chapter of my life stopped.
I tried sculpting and casting my own figures but that was too much like hard work so that sideline didn't last long. Then I started again, just over 3 years ago before the birth of my son, with an Airfix 1:72 Mustang.
I have now built a few more 1:72 and a couple of 1:48 aircraft, some vehicles, even dared to go to the dark side and build a couple of tanks, thanks to the rapid acceleration of the hobby and the drive for more detail and more realistic finishes, Facebook model pages and online model sites I now like photo etch, have a collection of pigments and washes and own a rudimentary "stash".
I have gravitated again towards figure painting and busts and since joining the club have attended my first show and joined the IPMS.