Knight of the Holy Sepulchre part I

My third ongoing project is a 54mm historical figure from Pegaso, a Knight of the Holy Sepulchre.  The figure could pass for any crusader, but I've seen a lot of Templars and Hospitallers so I thought this would be a little different.  With the banner and flowing cape (not on there yet) it's a really showy figure, so I planned to paint this for the Crystal Brush competition.  Something came up and I had to miss the show this year, but I figure why not stick to the plan and just enter it next year?  So I'm getting a really really early start on my 2015 Crystal Brush entry!

I'm starting with the rider, he's just temporarily set on the horse so you can see how it all looks.  The same goes for the banner, that's just resting in his hand but I'll remove it for painting.

So far I've put a lot of work into the face, trying to get a high contrast between lights and shadows.  The kit for this figure comes with a nose guard for the helmet, but it obscures so much of the face I decided to leave it off.  I just puttied over the hole in the helmet.

He's wearing scale armor which I painted bronze.  I'm not sure scale armor is 100% accurate for the crusaders, but it looks neat so why complain?  I painted it with the same technique as the metal on Sumothay and the Praetor.  However I also went back over it with a number of different GW shades to add some additional color.