d) METAL WORK: I tend to go for the shiny metal look with my figures, rather than trying to achieve ultra-realism. My favourite metallic colour is ‘Chain Mail’, a pot of paint I bought in Lincoln in 1986! It is so old that the label has long since fallen off, so I have no idea of the make. The fact that it is still in use after all this time speaks for itself. It is a nice dark colour like iron and I dab some of this on as a base colour and then highlight with my other favourite metal colour, Mithril Silver from the Games Workshop range. Belt buckles and other metal fittings are added with a single layer of Mithril Silver or one of the Humbrol Metal Acrylic colours for variety. As a final word on metal work, I keep separate brushes for painting metals and clean them in a different pot from my other brushes. If you don’t do this, you will find your figures start to develop a glittery look as particles of metallic paint adhere themselves to your non-metallic paints.
e) HORSES: I have a simple method for painting horses. I use ‘Foliage Factory’ horse sheens. On top of the black undercoat, I put a base colour made up from one of the horse sheens with a little matt black acrylic added. This gives you a dark, muddy base colour. Onto this I paint the horse sheen itself, taking care not to paint in the depressed areas. This is usually enough to give a sufficient highlight to your horse, but a further highlight colour can be applied to knees, neck and the horses ‘rump’ to make these stand out further. I tend to paint mane and tail black if the horse is a dark colour, or white if it is a grey, palamino or light bay. I like my horses to have plenty of white markings, so they usually have four white socks and some form of facial markings. Once all this has been done, I paint over leatherwork with matt black, making sure that a clear shadow is present between the leather and the horse colour. Finally, the leatherwork is painted in the same way as the ‘BELTS & BOOTS’ above.

Another shot of my Anglo-Norman heavy cavalry from Gripping Beast. Wonderful figures, but the horses do take a lot of work.
Below, a couple of Renaissance period heavy cavalry from Wargames Foundry. These figures are less bulky than the Gbs, but the casting quality is far superior.