i again!
As part of my work on the Irish figures, I definitely got won over to the idea of multi-basing my figures, so I began the task of peeling off the old individual bases for my kern that I had done in late 2021 and grouping them together!
As part of the rebasing I also wanted to bulk up my old bonnachts from twelve to twenty-four figures, and also redo the painting on some of the older léine that I weren't quite happy with with a year's worth of hindsight to them (and also having picked up a wet-palette in the meantime too!).
To keep things as varied as possible, I've tried to include as many head and weapon swaps as possible, including four with swords and shields to stretch out the number of close-combat figures available!
And also as part of the units I've added some to be a command base, with a piper and a standard bearer. The flag is interchangable, so the unit can be fielded with the flags of any Irish lords (although here I've used the flag for the Fitzgeralds of Kildare)
With the bases, the aim is to field the Bonnachts as either two blocks of 12, or a combined group of 24 (as a mirror to formations of bills in Never Mind the Billhooks)
The inspiration for the figures here, including many of the headswaps, came from Stuart Mulligan's blog post here, which has an excellent writeup of the historical context and terminology around the clothing: https://stuartsworkbench.blogspot.com/2021/11/irish-kern.html
I've also used the idea of mixing different shades of yellow from the blog post to indicate different levels of quality of dye (and to avoid having everyone be wearing the same shade of yellow). So roughly half the unit have the brighter, bolder yellow, and a lot of the rear rank, and most of the duplicates, have a more faded mustard/ochre colour being used
The ionar (jackets) were a pretty fun opportunity to include some additional colours in the unit, on top of the yellow. I've taken some inspiration from this site (which sells reproduction clothing) in terms of the colours and patterning: http://www.gaelicattire.com/ionar.htm
I hope they've turned out ok! Focusing on the brighter, warmer yellows for the léine is definitely growing on me, with fewer of the drab ones in the mix!
This time, as a continuation of the Irish force I've already started on the side, I’ve decided to put together a command base. The figures are a lot of fun to paint, so it was a good way to get back into the swing of things! Plus, it’s been sort of a first foray into multi-basing figures, as opposed to individually basing them
The commander here is intended to be Sir Thomas Fitzgerald, who fought (and died) at Stoke Field in 1487, fighting on the Yorkist side there in command of the Irish contingent. I've left the figures themselves without any liveries, and the banner is interchangeable, so he could just as easily stand in for Silken Thomas in his rebellion against Henry VIII, or really any other Irish knight or lord in the late 15th or early 16th centuries!
Most of the figures on the base are straight from the Perry Irish command (although the one with the sword has a head-swap!), while the Gallowglass lurking behind Fitzgerald is from the Antediluvian Miniatures Dürer Galloglass set.
Fitzgerald himself is based on a Perry WotR standard bearer, with a plume added to his helmet, and a two-handed sword in place of a polearm, to fit more thematically with the rest of the Irish force. As a knight (or lord, depending on which Fitzgerald) with ties to England and the Pale, I wanted to set Fitzgerald apart from the other figures, so I decided to use an armoured figure as the base, but at the same time to show that he's still very much Irish (or Anglo-Irish, at least in the Fitzgerald case), he's wearing his yellow léine tucked under the armour.
I've also given Fitzgerald a beard, as part of making him a more 'generic' Irish commander. The beard itself is partly based on this portrait of Silken Thomas from the 16th century:
