Byzantine Heavy Kavallaroi in Progress

I had a spare half an hour so decided to take a few shots of the first six, basically the front ranks of a unit of Early Byzantine Heavy Kavallaroi in I have on my painting table in the studio. The horses are complete but remain unvarnished. I learned a lesson when putting together Belisarius' Boukellaroi in that I forgot to make sure the cavalry models actually fitted onto the horses which resulted in a great deal of anguish as I feverishly (but very gently) filed away at the painted and varnished Boukellaroi models until they eventually fit the barded horses. A mistake that I wasn't going to repeat again. So, it was out with the "bastard file" (TM) which I used to file the underside of all of the Kavallaroi models in order for them to fit on all of their mounts. I didn't want to leave anything to chance! This meant trying out each Kavallaroi model on each horse. Worth to avoid a repeat of the heartbreak of having to repaint  and varnish the filed "underbellies" of the Boukellaroi!

I recently bought a very large number of Late Roman models from both Footsore Miniatures Late Roman Range and Gripping Beast Late Roman range in preparation for the The Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge which will of course be documented on this blog. My aim with the Early Byzantine Heavy Kavallaroi is to get the unit finished as well as three Infantry Command Bases prior to The Challenge. I will almost certainly complete the former task in time but might fall short of getting the command bases completed simply because of the sheer volume of Late Romans I have to clean up and prepare by December the 20th so I can start slapping on the paint the next day. 

I thought it might be of interest to some to see how my miniatures look roughly half way through the painting process. They looks a bit untidy in places, which is not a worry as my Art College education is a real boon in terms of mixing colours that match the hues already applied to the models. I am lucky in that it's not something that I usually have to spend too much time ruminating on; as colour theory (re; Colour spheres!) were drummed into me at an earlier age.

A word or two on the horses. The tones of the horseflesh are more of less made up and somewhat removed from how they would appear in reality. This is fine by me as I really enjoy painting horses and it would be unusual for me to be unhappy with the results. As long as I can take my time, have a good old mess around mixed with some experimentation, I am good.

As usual all the images are "clickabe". If you have any trouble, just right click, then click on "open image in new tab" and you will open a new page with the full sized image.

The Kavallaroi models are roughly at the halfway stage. It should be pretty clear that I paint from a very flat matt black undercoat on top of a black primer. As mentioned in the above, it should also be somewhat clear that I have an idea of what colours I'm going to apply to where as I paint.