Be honest now, who was thinking, "what the hell is this going to be??".
I got a PM from Hellfoot giving a link for a page on doing Chequers. Thanks for that Mate
http://coolminiornot.com/article/aid/807/page/1
The idea is great, but then I thought,
"bugger, can´t do that!" as I base with black. Then I came up with a variation
Paint the whatever in black base and instead of using a pencil on a white base as suggested in the link, scratch the pattern with a pin!!!!!!
So here goes. Thin coat of black Acrylic base. Has to be well thin as too thick and the paint flakes off in big lumps.
Paint the first colour. Here I´ve used emerald green with a bit of brown, about 66%green-33%middle brown. Basically fill the alternate squares all over the figure.
Paint the second colour. This time 66% canary yellow - 33% middle brown.
Noe comes the fun bit. You have to go over every square again using a lighter tone of the first colour, but basically painting more of the edge of each square each time (working from the middle out). This takes at least 3 goes, moving up to near pure emerald green or canary yellow. This seems (and I found this out by accident) to give the material look
Paint the underneath of the horsecoat (ie; where it´s flapped back) and finito!! The very last bits of edging I do when the riders on as I´ve found that damage can occur when attaching the riders and that just makes me want to tear my hair out when I´ve attempted to get it near perfect and then have to redo bits. (and obviously the saddle and reins etc have to be painted as well)