WIP Stradiot light cavalry

My painting distractions of late have taken a Stradiot theme. I have a lot of these figures and would like to get quite a few painted up prior to basing for maximum mix and match potential and to result in a decent sized swarm to terrorise their English border horse counterparts.

Progress on these was a little slow as I played around a bit with some themes but I've now figured out what my approach will be and they're proving easier to paint. My initial thoughts on these troops were that they just wore myriads of brown which didn't really appeal to me that much. However after doing a bit of reading and gathering as much as I could it seems that isn't quite the case.

As with most new painting projects I like to gather a bank of images and ideas to refer to which in this instance centres around image searches of the following; Balkan, Albanian, Macedonian, Greek cloth, clothing, dress, patterns, traditional / medieval / renaissance dress.

These are then filtered with a bias for simple patterns and colours and result in this work in progress thus far.

I've gone with a muted tone for their smocks with lines of decoration showing on the seams or their under-tunics / waistcoats appearing more intricate. I've no idea at all if this is a true reflection of these troops but as the term Stradiot is a bit of a catch all for men from a fairly wide area it feels like I've captured the right mood in overall appearance.

I've reflected this in the horses too, going with breeds typical of central Europe with a bias for the palomino type colouring to highlight a sense of rapid wild fury that is associated with the Stradiot cavalry of the early sixteenth century.

Shield designs are still proving to be a bit of a hard nut to crack, the nearest thing I can find with a few image resources are the shields of Hungarian cavalry but i'll stick at it and see what I can come up with.

All the best.
Stuart.