Most of the figures I've got are stored in in a pile of plastic boxes; when I want a new figure to paint, I go to the top box of the pile, close my eyes, and pick a figure at random from the box, then put that box to the bottom of the pile.
This time, I picked a really old figure manufactured by Archive in the late 1970's. I have to be honest, when it came out of the box, my heart sank. It wasn't even a figure I'd actively gone looking for; it had come as part of a job lot of other figures I'd won on an auction site. Still, once out of the box it was a case of doing my best with it:
I'm not happy with it on lots of levels. The horse parts are OK, but the human part is incredibly coarse - just look at the proportions and moulding on that arm, and the face! And check out the cord on the bow - you could use that to fire a ballista! Figure sculpting has come a long way since the late 1970's. The figure was also on an integral plinth-like base, which has been disguised with standard flock and Milliput boulders.
I'm still not especially happy with the paint job - although the horse parts painted up quite well, none of my usual shading/highlighting techniques seemed to do much to conceal the basic faults with the human parts of the figure.
The other thing I was thinking whilst painting this was, "why was this figure produced?" I'm guessing it would have been for use in ancient Greece-like D&D adventures, but I couldn't think of too many scenarios where you'd want/need a teenage centaur - surely you'd use a more generic war-like adult centaur. This one looks and feels more like a toy rather a serious gaming figure.
Anyhow, rant over. Figure done, and consigned to the painted pile (and probably bound back to the auction site from whence it came!).
