It's been over five years since I painted anything more than one or two figures at a time.
Stage One was to sort out what colours I was going to use. After seeing the Halfling infantry painted up (in a previous Workbench article) in traditional rural greens and browns, I decided to follow suit so 
Editor in Chief Bill 
's army would look consistant. But these are Halflings, so I still needed an irregular outfit rather than a uniformed one. So I chose colours from British Khaki to Camouflage Green to various Brown Leather tones. 90% of the paints I use are Coat D'arms, with some leftover Games Workshop colours. I also chose three grey tones and three brown tones for the mounts. Remember - I only have two poses, and so wanted to paint a difference into the unit.
So onto the painting. First up, the basecoat. I painted all of the mounts first, using one colour for two mounts. I then applied an ink wash to the mounts - brown ink for brown colour, and a watered-down black wash for the greys.
Then I started on the riders, using the same technique. First, I painted all the exposed flesh - and since these were Halflings, that meant doing the feet as well! For the riders themselves, I would keep the production line going by choosing a colour and paint - say, the cloaks - on three of the riders with that colour, and then the trousers of a different three with the same colour. Then move onto the next colour and repeat the process. This slowly built up the basecoats on all of the riders, and also meant I didn't have to keep cleaning the brush only to use the same colour on another rider later on.
The only uniform element I went for was to paint the rider's armour in the same leather brown. For the riders with exposed hair, I again picked a selection of colours to keep them looking different from each other.
Once the basecoats were done and dry, I moved on to drybrushing the models. For the mounts, I had already applied an ink wash, so I simply used a lighter shade of their basecoat to bring out the fur detail. For the riders, I did not worry too much about matching the colour of the basecoat for the drybrushing. I made up a neutral light brown, and applied that across the whole model. The reason I didn't have to worry too much about matching the colour was because I then applied a brown ink wash to the whole rider - a bit like the "dip method," only I kept the ink fairly watered down. If the ink was applied too thick, it would dry-stain some parts and completely miss others. This method also helped to cover a multitude of sins, but was ideal for painting lots of figures at once. And because I used all earthy colours, the brown ink blended them together quite nicely.
With the miniatures drybrushed and inked, you can actually stop there. But I like to go over them and do a bit of highlighting, and paint in a little detail. So I went over the quiver and fletching of the arrows, picking out details; painted the mounts' tongues (well, they are dogs) and eyes; and did a light drybrusing over the riders' cloaks.
Although Editor in Chief Bill said not to worry about basing, I gave the bases a quick coat of Grass Green, and then sprayed the finished miniatures with matt varnish (mainly to protect them for the journey back across the pond).
So there you have it. A nice, simple (and quick) method for painting your rank-and-file troops. And a set of 15mm Halfling Cavalry miniatures that will hopefully look good on the tabletop.