The army of Minas Tirith

I've been working on this batch of minis for a while now. I actually started at the beginning of June. It wasn't the best time for painting as I was very busy at work and then left for two weeks for holidays. In fact, I did most of the painting during the last two weeks.
Batch painting is a good solution while working on armies or larger units but it's a tedious work. Painting many miniatures simultaneously can be an effective way of getting the job done though.
One of the reasons it took me so long is that I wanted to maintain a solid quality throughout the whole force. As a result I would spend hours working on the same elements, making sure they all receive at least a few highlights, washes where necessary and glazes for the extra depth effect.
First off, the Warriors of Minas Tirith:

They're the core of every MT army. The quality of the sculpts is generally OK but there's one thing that bothered me a lot while I was working on them. The helmets are nice but their faces are sculpted in a very uneven way, they are slightly deformed in the area around their eyes, which makes painting this element very tough. And getting both eyes look right is sometimes a challenge here. One of the warriors with sword and shield in the front line has this bad look that just screams: "I am constipated!", so after taking the pics I repainted his mouth.
And of course no army can go on without leaders so here's a pic of the command (with a special guest appearance by Boromir):

They have more details that make them stand out from the rest so I paid extra attention to make sure they pop at first glance. 

And some cavalry, 12 of them in total. I used three different shades of brown for the horses. Looking at the pictures, I can see that I should have taken more from a different angle to show that properly. Another thing I noticed was that the tree symbol on Boromir's chest plate is a tad too dark and his lance is a bit crooked. I highlighted the tree better but left the lance untouched. This one has a long journey ahead of him so it's probably better to leave him like that and let his new owner do that - the metal parts can be bent pretty easily but they tend to break easily too after they've been touched too many times.

 

 The riders aren't glued to the backs of their mounts as this would make packing them into a parcel tricky.
I was hesitating whether to follow the official color scheme completely or make some minor changes and in the end did the latter. I painted the saddles using brown instead of black. I think it played out pretty well as otherwise the riders' tunics would blend in with them.

And last but not least - the main hero in this force - let's give Boromir some spotlight.

Really great mini with excellent details that make him stand out from the crowd as the leader, while at the same time with enough characteristic elements to keep him tied well to the rest of the force. The banner was a challenge. It's a big, entirely flat surface so filling it with details painted with freehand wasn't easy.

And that's pretty much it as far as armored Minas Tirith army is concerned, at least for the time being. I am going to paint some more miniatures soon (Army of the Dead and Knights of Dol Amroth) and will be posting an update once I start working on them. I also still have some unpublished pictures of the minis for Gondor that I painted a while ago - I'll post them here soon.