'Risk Taker' from BillA - 'You Are My Huckleberry'

Here were are, then, the last bonus round of the 6th Painting Challenge - Gamblers & Risk-Takers is the theme, and let me tell you folks - I felt like a risk taker signing up for the Challenge; I didn't really know any of the other participants, my painting habits have been irregular at best, and I was skittish that my skills wouldn't be refined enough to mix with such company as this.  I'm happy to have been proven wrong, and to have made some good friends along the way.  I haven't been able to keep on top of checking out and commenting on everyone's postings as I'd like, but I'm hoping to do better on that front next year.

For this round, I knew I wanted an Old West figure, and originally I was looking for a Wild Bill Hickok, ideally seated at a poker table, Aces and Eights in hand.  I never found one I liked, however, so I settled for the West's second most well known gambler, John Henry "Doc" Holliday (1851-1887).  A TB-suffering dentist and sometimes-lawman in addition to making a living as a gambler, Holliday is best known for serving as deputy under Wyatt Earp during the famed Shootout at OK Corral, and Earp's subsequent vendetta against the Clantons, depicted memorably (with Holliday portrayed by Val Kilmer), in 1993's TOMBSTONE.  It was to this film that I turned to for inspiration painting this figure of Holliday, purchased from Reaper Miniatures' Chronoscope line.

He was NOT an easy figure to prep for painting - sheets, sheets I tell you, of flash lined his inner arms, forming a "flying squirrel flap" from his wrists to his coat pockets, and the barrels of his guns were bent double.  When I first saw the condition the figure was in I despaired a little bit, and seriously considered just chucking him and starting anew with a different figure, but I bucked up and decided to see what I could do to make him pass muster.  There are a few spots that you can still see where problems were (inside his right sleeve, for example), but overall I feel pretty good about the job I did fixing him up.