HUNGARIAN "MILITIA" IN NATIONAL COSTUME

 

Completed contingent of Hungarian Militia in Peasant Costume for my One Hour Skirmish (OHSK) Balkan/Frontier project collection.

Greetings dear reader(s).  Here is another addition to my OHSK project. These figures are from the discontinued Keelman/former Steve Barber Hungarian Revolt line: "Hungarian Militia in Peasant Uniform" (more on that in a bit). As usual, you may clix pix for BIG PIX in this post. 

They would appear to have been, at least in part, modelled on the above left illustration from the Gyozo Smogyi Honved Army, 1848-49 book, which calls them by the same name. I'm sure that in the very specific context of the Hungarian Revolt of 1848, 1849 there may have been militia units (or a militia unit) raised and garbed as such. But my purview is wider, and I will treat these not as some specific militia unit, but as armed citizens in national costume (in this case, Hungarian)--irregular local defense forces not uncommon to frontier regions and the Balkans in particular. 

Doing a bit of research into the Hungarian National costume, I found that the signature look was/is a grand, embroidered mantle. These figures, however, are not in such garb: as a matter of fact, they are in waistcoats and shirt sleeves.  So, I looked for samples of what sort of costume might be commonly worn underneath the mantles...

    

...and I found that, like the figure in the Smogyi illustration, there was a consistent theme of black underclothing beneath the mantles. The bottom illustration of the three seated men, in particular, illustrates a very consistent uniformity--and their costume is a close match for the figures. So...

...my initial take was use this illustration as a model, and do these figures in the same motif. As an aside, the "white" is not actually white, of course (nothing is that simple). To get some texture and differentiation, I did the white areas first in Humbrol light gray, then a wash of black, followed by a highlight and drybrush of flat white.  Similarly, the black areas have a drybrush of  Humbrol gunship gray. But I digress. Getting back to the figures...

                                     Montenegrins                          Bashi Bazouks

                                                                       Seressaners

...these black-and-white Hungarians were okay, but seemed monastic compared to my other contingents in national costumes (Montenegrins, Bashi Bazouks, and Seressaners) .  So, I did a bit more research into embellishments that might be appropriate for the shirt sleeve and vest configuration...

...and found several examples such as the ones above. These plus the  patterns found on the mantles provided models for adding some color to the lads...

...and here is one example: each figure was given a unique set of embellishments. I abstracted the patterns to give a general impression rather than trying to render micro details, and kept them all within the same representative color palette.

  

Here are four figures showing a 360 degree view of the sculpts. 

A view of the new contingent of eight figures and their distinctive patterns. 

View from the in-game ("three foot") perspective. 

Excelsior!