I've been very baaaad

In this season of post-Christmas purging, like many gamers I made a small resolution not to buy any more models until I've painted the ones I have. This recently went out of the window when a retailer had an online bargain bin sale with a few things I wanted at knockdown prices. The lure of cheap models with the fear of limited stock is such a terrible snare.

No apologies for the pun.

Even with this little lot, I still won't declare the 'Anglo-Norman Project' entirely finished. I would like to get a couple of packs from the Perrys to provide some Hail Caesar command bases and another cavalry command group. I also thought about getting some civilian women, but the ones from Gripping Beast are too obviously Viking, and the ones from Curteys are £10 as part of a mixed group which while nice isn't really justifiable.

You rotten swine you!

So I now posses two lots of livestock and rather anachronistic 15th century breech-loading field gun from the Perrys. I've been ogling the model on their website for a while, and when playing fantasy games cannon are usually one of the only really hard hitting units the human factions have access to. Fantasy only mind, I know I could always 'counts as' my chaps for a Wars of the Roses game, but it wouldn't feel right somehow.

Crew to be painted, of course, in the colours of the Gunners of course

Despite all this new stuff, I have actually made progress on the Gripping Beast civilians, most notably the monks. Keen observers will observe that I've painted the armed ones first, which I think is an indication of my violent urges finding an outlet only in the arena of toy soldiers. The habit colour was chosen after a five minute internet search: St. Benedict never specified the colour of monastic attire in his Rule, apparently, so (says google) undyed cloth was common.

A few centuries earlier and they'd be holy men bravely defending themselves against marauding Vikings, but since it's now the High Middle Ages, they're thugs extracting more taxes from the villeins.

I've decided to experiment a little with painting them. The armed lot have had their clothes painted from a leather brown base with no ink or wash, building up slowly to off-white (one Youtube painter cautions over reliance on inks). The more peaceful brothers have started out off-white, but have been brown inked, and will be worked back up. I found one left over as I was photographing those, so he will get whichever job gives best results.

Whilst both of the left hand figures look sinister (geddit?), only one is drawing a knife from his sleeve...

 I'm justFinishing up the basing on the female knights and Curtey's slingers, when they're done I'll post individual pics and a nice group shot of my Anglo Normans and their fantasy support based for Kings of War.