Painting Challenge Review

Well... So it ended. Three months of winter painting madness ended last week and how challenging they were!

But first things first. It all started in November when Curt announced his 4th Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge and I was lucky enough to receive one of the sixty slots he offered. It was a completely new experience for me and I found it very difficult to calculate my point target. Finally I intended to pass all seven bonus rounds, added some units I wanted to finish definitely during the three months of the challenge and aimed at 600 points.

My first entry was kind of unspectacular. Just a sleeping monk as a quick finger exercise:

But afterwards the first bonus round "Non-Combatants" was to fulfill and I entered a vignette made of AWI Perry figures:

During Christmas and New Year wasn't that much time for painting but at least I managed to finished my entry for the second bonus round "Villain": A Warhammer 40K Broodlord:

Simultaneously I started with the preparations for our "Retreat 1812" game White Death which we presented at Tactica in Hamburg and so I painted some Frenchmen
 for this background. Funnily a theme which other painters went into as well...

Now the "Vehicle" bonus round came close and I decided to enter the largest 28mm model I've ever painted: A Horsa glider

While Tactica draw near and we were in need of some more miniatures for gaming. So I finished General Desvaux de Saint-Maurice for the "Heroes" bonus round and some more French retreaters and entered them to the challenge:

Afterwards I finished my -for the moment- last model for the 1812 retreat theme: a sledge with exchangeable load:

Then another bonus round was to tackel and Curt asked for "Casualties". I decided to realize a project I had in mind for some time and presented the death of Colonel Christian von Ompteda at Waterloo:

Then I turned my interest slightly towards Saga. The excellent news of the upcoming publication of the German rulebook gave me a real boost and I finished a unit of Berserkers, a unit of Hirdmen, my new warlord that fulfilled the "Last Stand" bonus round and a unit of Bondi to complete my 4 points warband:

 

But between those Viking raiders another bonus round conquered my workbench. A "Favourite Character" had to presented and I decided to paint good old Monty for it:

So the end of the challenge was approaching slowly and time was running out for me. But at least the British redcoats I promised to paint for "Bloggers for Charity" were finished:

Well then... That were my entries. Nearly!

Because besides all these entries I was able to chose myself there was one duty for our honorable host to accomplish. Curt asked the challengers to present him a miniatures related to the movies directed by Sam Peckinpah. While some fellows chose to paint WW2 miniatures representing characters from the Steiner movies I stayed obvious and painted a Wargames Foundry cowboy as delegate of Peckinpah's numerous western movies. And he is presented for the very first time on my blog:

The miniature is from Wargames Foundry and actually his name is "Lonesome Dexter" from the "This town ain't big enough". But this time he shall represent one of the countless cowboys immortalized in Sam Peckinpah's movies. Curt asked for such an act of appreciation and I hope my humble work bestows honour to his concern.
This fellow was the first Wild West figure I ever painted. And it was great fun. It is well detailed and sculpting as well as casting are of top-notch quality as usual for Wargames Foundry. Once again I employed Vallejo's Model Colour range to paint it but skipped Quickshade this time because I didn't have the time to let it dry long enough. To give the miniature a little special 'something' I didn't only decorate the top of the base but the bottom as well.

So these were my sober entries for this extraordinary challenge. Altogether they earned me earned me 701 points so I exceeded my target to a considerable degree. I'm really satisfied with that because actually I'm a rather slow player.
Besides the point target I had two side challenges running. Firstly honourable Michael Awdry and me agreed to pass all seven bonus rounds. We both stood the test so many congrats, Michael!
Additionally I joyned Ray's, Fran's, Lee's, Dave's and Clint's 600 points club. Fran was the first of us to complete his points so I owe him a painted miniature. Drop me a line via the contact form,  Google+ or montys[dot]caravan[at]googlemail[dot]com to discuss the details, mate! It'll be a pleasure to fulfil this debt of honour!

So my review ends and it's time to say THANK YOU VERY MUCH above all to our host Curt but to all other challengers which shared this winter - Scotty for you rather summer... - madness. It was great fun to participate and I enjoyed the company of you excellent painters and modellers a lot. Many congrats to Andrew "Loki" Saunders who won the challenge with unbelievable 4.180 points! Additionally those three months let me learn a lot about my very own way of painting and pushed my skills forward.
It was an honour to see my humble work presented alongside the pieces of art you fellows submitted. For next winter I'll definitely reserve a time slot for the next painting challenge hoping to snatch a slot again. I hope you like this little sign of appreciation.

If you didn't find the time to browse all the entries until now then have a look at Curt's blog. It's definitely worth it:
http://analogue-hobbies.blogspot.ca/

There you'll find a link to the fortnight bonus rounds as well as a huge number of entries for the usual entries.

Have fun !