Interesting post. My vote was a toss up between PinkyBeecroft and The Buckland Brewer's figures, because I thought both were very well done. I've been painting for, well, to be quite honest, longer than many of the forum members here have been born, and I can see quite a lot of technique in Pinky's mounted King of the Dead.
In the time I've been back on this forum, I have taken it to be a "best painted figure" competition, since I don't know any of the regulars here or how well Jim paints compared to Joe compared to Jack, so I don't really know or care who has improved the best, I'm just voting based on my personal aesthetic preference.
My figures have got 0 votes at the moment, but hey, that's life. I thought it would lack class to vote for my own figures, and besides, I'm happy to add one more to whichever of the noted figures I did vote for. My comments in a couple of other threads could have potentially cost me a vote or three, but when it comes down to it, in my opinion, it's not a "real" competition anyway. So who gives a rat's?
The "prize" is effectively meaningless - I take the painting challenges in much more of a "tale of four gamers" sense in that it gives me a motivation to actually get around to painting figures that have been sitting around for the better part of a decade, while looking at others painting the same or similar models, in a general atmosphere of general encouragement, which I believe is the real intent of the format. Not to "win" two "gold coins". If it's about "improvement" then I'm hosed for life anyway, as my own standard, which I consider high, hit an overall plateau about 18 years ago, with only small imporvements in technique and so forth since then.
Really though - three of the latest four figures actually don't offer an enormous amount of scope in their painting - Barrow-Wights, Nazgul, Ents, all three are in a sense "much of a muchness" kinds of figures, as they will tend to look very similar. The fact that there have been as many interesting paintjobs as we have gotten is a pretty good outcome. - But then again this is also true of a large part of the LotR range, as almost everything as seen in the films may as well be painted or washed over in a dirty grey...