Norman Army started

As hinted at earlier I have to provide opponents for my Teutonic Order army.

I chose Normans from the Kallistra Hordes & Heroes Historical range.

I started with the Armoured Cavalry and the Command group. After cleaning up the minimal flash I stuck the figures to wooden strips with Blue Tac. This allows me hold several figures at a go with no fingermarks in the paint.

I chose not to undercoat these particular figures in either white or black and I will be inking them at a later stage so I don't need either bright colours or deep painted shadows. I used GW Bestial Brown to base coat the rider part of the figures. Everything but the horse, so I did the saddle cloth, saddle, rider, especially where there might be undergarments or hair, back of the shield and lance poles and pennants. In other words it will be the places that will be hard to paint later on without overpainting something else.

I paint in largish batches, in this case two units of cavalry and all the command figures.  A lot of the shields will be blue, brown or red so the brown is good base colour to use. I will be painting the horses next and I expect to use a large variety of browns, blacks and greys as long as it's not Bestial Brown for a contrast with riders.

I'm not 100% familiar with Norman shields and I don't have time to collect convincing documentary information. I've done a quick peek via Google at the Bayeux Tapestry and that will be good enough for me.