Norman Mounted Knights

A batch of Norman heavy cavalry. Horses were painted using the oil wash method described elsewhere on this blog. Riders painted seperately - undercoated  black, metal work given a light dry brush of Vallejo Oily Steel and painted up from there.

On future batches I will use very different shield colours and designs so that when based there will be much greater differentiation between shields. It makes it easier/ quicker to use similar colour schemes when doing batches.

As I intend to sell these not sure about whether to base individually, say for Saga, or in pairs for larger games where moving pieces is easier with fewer bases!!

The 'Conquest' begins

Sedgemoor coming along nicely. ECW under control. 1066 Saxons in check! Seemed like a good time to open another box of castings.


It was some Normans - an army I'd bought at Salute 2011 with the intention of painting alongside my Saxons. I'd never got them started. Very recently I've been looking at the Norman gallery on Tom Weiss's site (http://www.twfigurines.de/gallery.htm) and reading a book on Hastings 1066 so I now had all the inspiration, and the figures, needed to get cracking.


So, I've embarked on painting Normans (circa 1066.) As I intend to have a few days break from painting over the Bank holiday weekend I painted some samples over the last 2 days to get my head around how I'll paint them.


On the desk left to right:
Sample horses (for my Normans) for the horse painting tutorial - undercoated. More of this later;
Painted Saxon archers;
completed Norman knight;
Sample painted figure I bought from Mark Sims (Crusader Miniatures sculptor) which I used as a guide;
In the background a black undercoated Norman knight and a painted 13th century knight (did I mention I really would like to do 2 armies for the Battle of Lewes 1264, sorry I digress.)

Other pics,

Close-up of painted archers

 

Close-up of mounted knight

 

Archers glued to bases and awaiting completion. A casualty figure will be added to base on left.

Method
Decided on the following (same as my Saxons):
All soldiers to be undercoated in black.

All horses (apart from white, black and grey horses) to be oil washed over a wide variety of undercoats. I'm currently preparing a walk through of this method for those that are interested hence the undercoated horses in pic at top.

Basing as per Saxons - 40mm x 40mm for foot with varying numbers of figs depending on type i.e. 3 per base for archers... This method of basing is taken from the 'Crusader' Rules but I think it will be suitable for others!! (but I'm no expert here.)


I'll try to show how I paint these Normans over the coming weeks!

Saxon Fyrd

A unit of fyrd from my 1066 Saxon army. Crusader Miniatures painted from a black undercoat.

The matt black undercoat is Revel no 6. This was recommended to me, some years ago, by the very talented painter Andrew Taylor (Scotland.) It dries incredibly flat and very quickly. What I do is thin it quite heavily with Humbrol thinners and give the figures a heavy wash - this dries very matt and allows all the detail to stand out and, as with my brown undercoat method, makes all the detail easy to see and paint. I'll post a short step through and pics when I revisit the Saxons and Normans later this year as I have a large Norman army to paint!!

Some LBM shield transfers used here and there.