Almoravid warriors

Hi everyone.

Last year, I took some time to add a few Almoravid warriors to my (very) small band. The first ones have been painted years ago, poorly photographed and displayed on Hät website - they were issued from a test shot grape.
Several years have passed before they received reinforcement, and now, it is interested to show the differences between them: different painting style, and different camera :)
In the first batch of painting, I used only matt paints, dark brown underlining, highlights with at least 3 or 4 layers, no washes.. that was really nice, but was a very long technique: I spent at least 3 or 4 hours on each mini.
In the second batch, I have given up underlining, I now use a lot of inks (mainly dark brown, but also others, such as sepia), and usually 2 layers of highlights (more on central figures) - about 1 hour and a half per mini.

Let's begin with a family picture.

Fierce warriors coming from western North Africa

I chose the colors partly after the documentation found here and there, and partly after the clothes people were wearing as I noticed during my travels in Morocco: mainly blue, brown, ochre, grey, off-white.

The Almoravid army relied a lot on light cavalry, but I only painted infantry so far. The first to be displayed below are light skirmishers, probably coming from the Senegal river area (hence the very dark skin):

Their shields are covered with wild animal skins. You will notice that the base colors are different: that is how you will make a difference between the guys from the first and the second batches: the base of the latter is darker.

Here you are other units of light infantry: archers, slingers, javelinmen. Comparing old and modern figures, you will notice that the contrast is higher, which is fine since they are gaming minis.

Then the heavy infantry:

The last two have richer clothes than their counterparts. They come from the Andalusian set, and will be played as Andalusians too.

Beyond their historical purpose, it may be interesting to notice that the figures can easily be used in Fantasy as Haradrims, in the Lord of the Rings universe. If I find time one of these days, I may try to paint one of these guys with a red / purple / black color scheme :)

Oh, I almost forgot the camera change. You will see below one of the old photos, taken with a pocket camera. Now I use a Reflex: the difference is obvious!

I hope you found this post interesting, see you soon.