From KeithS - My Final Hurrah (22 points)

For my finale, I have a small offering I managed to knock out in the last couple of days.  Up first, a Fire Giant which I picked up at Gary Con last week.  Gary Con is a smallish gaming convention held in Lake Geneva Wisconsin every year to honor Gary Gygax.  Run by his kids, its a great little con that mixes D&D and other RPGs, as well as plenty of miniatures gaming.  Anyhow, they had a limited release Fire Giant mini made by Ral Partha that seemed appropriate to pick up.  He's a wee 'un for a Giant, at a mere 45mm tall, but I rather liked the sculpt.

From the back.  I more or less painted it based on the program from the con, which featured him on the cover.

Not sure if this constitutes a good hair day, or a bad one.

Jarl Maltevich?  Sounds close to John Malkovitch to me!

My very last painting for the challenge was, appropriately enough, an experiment.  After painting a lot of old lead, I went on a buying spree on eBay for old stuff recently. Among the piles I bought with hardly any discretion were a lot of skeletons.  I have not painted any in decades, so I decided to do a little research online and then paint three identical figures in different ways to see how they turned out; I read so many differing ways to do it I really thought I ought to see for myself.  Well, here they are.  I like all three!  I'll be hard pressed to settle on a specific method for the rest!  In addition to sheer bulk painting, this challenge was great at getting me to push some boundaries and do some experimenting!

They're from Ral Partha.  I have about 40 more from various lots I picked up.  I'm basing them for dungeons.  And, as further experimentation, I used wood filler instead of milliput or spackle.  It's probably the cheapest, is almost as strong as milliput when dry, but is slightly harder to shape as neatly as the others.  A trade off, but it'll do for now.

They'll make good bannermen for the force of skeleton warriors I'm about to unleash on the world!

Thanks to Curt, Dave and everyone else who made this challenge possible.  I got a LOT more out of it than I expected, and really got a shove forward on painting some stuff that's been lingering in storage for decades.  Looking forward to next year!

Great work Keith! That GaryCon sounds like a wonderful weekend in the 'way-back' machine. It's very cool that they used Ral Partha for the con's figure as he definitely has that Old School look about him. I also like your experiment with your trio of skellies. I think I like the older bones on the one on the left, the aged armour from the center and the somewhat brighter banner back on the left. That being said they are all very creepy fellow - in the best possible way! 

It's been a pleasure Keith and I hope you'll join us next December for Challenge VII.