Well, the voting is over on round one (though through a strange combination of circumstances I have no idea how the day went), so as I enjoyed painting these figures so much I thought I might as well make a thread out of them, and inflict some close-ups of them on you people.
First we have Queen Elizabeth. A Cate Blanchett rather than Miranda Richardson example, I'm sorry to say. At her birth a great disappointment to her father, but went on to have a long and glorious reign, and star in countless film and TV costume dramas. No mean feat, considering she had to overcome what was in those backward times an almost insurmountable impediment - that of being a ginger.
Good fun to paint, apart from the tassels , which I kept messing up.
Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. He of the wife who "accidentally" fell down the stairs. Should have been a 1970s British copper.
Not sure if it's Robert Hardy, Joseph Fiennes or Tom Hardy. Looks most like Robert, I think. Hey, is Robert Hardy Tom Hardy's dad?
Prominent and in-no-way-fictional Tudor courtier Lord Blackadder. Played by Rowan Atkinson on TV, though here you could possibly mistake him for Virat Kohli.
Lord Percy Percy, foremost alchemist of the Elizabethan age.
Baldrick, a minion. Entirely unrelated to a certain LAF moderator called Nick.
A man on his way to an EDL march, I think.
Some billmen, presenting their bills. Apologies to students of the period if I have entirely messed up the colours and such on these fellows. I know almost nothing about the Tudor military, in fact almost all my knowledge of it comes from BBC serials (as is probably obvious by now). I didn't really do any research either, which I know is very, very naughty. Sorry.
These figures were an absolute joy to paint, everything just clicked with them and none of them got thrown across the room in frustration at all (which is unusual for me). I haven't enjoyed painting so much since I don't know when. One of those ranges where I say the figures "paint themselves." I have no idea what that really means, but it sounds good.
Another man with a flag. He has standards, this chap.
Now my nephew and gaming buddy, Mr. Sickly Eldritch has been trying to extort money out of me. He has threatened to create a LAF account just so he can tell everyone that I only painted one side of the flag, because you wouldn't see the other side in the photo. Well damn him. I shall not be blackmailed! I admit to it, it's all true.
So to those that voted for me, all I can do is humbly say...