They Think It's All Over...

...well, it is now. About 14 hours ago the shutters came down on submission of last-minute entries after three months of frenetic painting which saw 75 painters from around the globe take part. Sunday was complete madness as I can attest, having stepped up (along with DaveD) to assist Curt with getting submissions posted. At times it seemed that as soon as we had adjudicated and published someone's draft post, a new one would suddenly appear in the list to replace it. On Sunday alone there were 40 entries posted.

I managed to finish and submit three entries over the weekend:


Curtgeld: "Frack"

Things That Go Bump In Mexicagrave

At Salutesville City Penitentiary

The last few days were a real rollercoaster. My Crusties put me up into 10th place briefly, but then I slipped back to 12th. The ghouls put me into 8th place and the "bulls" jumped me into 4th place - it really was that tight on the points table. With nothing left in the bag, I got gazumped by Kyle's final entry and finished in 5th place with 1787 points. That is  my highest placing, even though it's my lowest overall score (AHPC3 - 1970 pts, 7th place; AHPC4 - 1959 pts, 8th place; AHPC5 - 2522 pts, 6th place).

I think this year saw me submit more entries than the previous years - 25 in the main event and three in the bonus theme rounds. Speaking of which, out of my three theme round entries I scored two podium spots (2nd in the Nostalgia round, 3rd in the Nautical round). Funnily enough both of those submissions were taking the mickey out of other Challengers. Maybe if I'd found a way to do that for my last one I might have had a third time on the prize winners' platform?

I'm going to take a brief break from the brushes to recuperate. Just a couple of days off. I will pick up the brushes to give them a good cleaning though, but not to apply paint to figures. I think I may have finally killed off my 2 main brushes with all the painting I've done.

At some point this week I'll be doing a round-up post of all my entries. Like last year, I'll group them by theme rather than posting them in the order they were published.

That just leaves me with one thing to do - thank everyone who took part in the Challenge, but especially Curt for running it once again. It's a fantastic event and gets stronger every year. I'm already looking forward to AHPC7 - thank goodness I've got 9 months to recover!