Grand Duchy of Stollen Visited 2000+ Times!

Well, it seems that The Grand Duchy has been visited more than 2000 times. In fact, there have been about 400 hits in the last two days alone! Not bad for an imaginary place. It's amazing what a few interesting photos will do to swell the number of visits to a blog!

I imagine that Grand Duke Irwin-Amadeus II is puffing an extra big cigar this morning. In honor of such a terrific milestone, here's one more photo of the 2nd (Von Laurenz) Musketeers. Oh, and it seems that Colonel Von Laurenz called off his duel with the commander of the Jaeger zu Fuss at the last minute the other day. Something about bad nerves. . .

On the painting front, Stollen's battery of artillery is about done. Just the brass sword pommels and scabbard tips remain on the crew and I'm almost finished paiting the wooden gun carraiges red, taking care to leave the black metal parts unpainted. Then it's brass barrels and a coat of Future floor finish. Should be able to wrap 'em up this weekend! Next, it's on to the staff of three, a regiment of 30 dragoons, and a few conversions, attaching Prussian heads to Napoleonic Saxon cuirassier bodies. Should keep me busy into January.

Best of all, we have a major winter storm approaching Central Illinois, just in time for December 1st, calling for 7-10" in our area of the state with around 15" in the Chicago area. Needless to say, our cross country skis stand at attention by the front door in anticipation. As Mike Myers's character "Dieter" from the ficticious German TV show Sprockets used to say, "I'm as happy as a little girl!"

Comments

Anonymous said…

Okay, Dieter!!! I love that you posted photos of your work. It really does help to conceptualize just how much work goes into each 'man'. Well done!

11:38 PM

Anonymous said…

"Let it snow let it snow let it snow" as Dean Martin would croon. I'd love to use the excuse - sorry boss snowed in can't come to work today.

1:57 AM

Bluebear Jeff said…

We're not just "snowed in", but we have burst pipes as well. No hot water and my bride is NOT HAPPY.

And, yes, the power was out again . . . but only for 14 hours this time.

-- Jeff

5:34 AM

It's Early Days Yet. . .

M aking some early progress with Batch A of the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment over the last several days/evenings. Nothing terribly exciting just yet, but the basic black, brown, and flesh areas are done as are the green bases, and gray undercoat. The latter two areas needed some careful retouching early in the week. Next up, the neck stocks. I might just do these in red for the enlisted men although some of my source material suggest they were black, but I always look for an excuse to shake things up a bit. Any errant splotches of red (or black) can be covered with another application of light gray before I move onto the next step. "Giddy up!" as one Cosmo Kramer might have said. -- Stokes

A Little More Brushwork. . .

A little more brushwork on the first batch of (my version of) the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment yesterday (Saturday). Taking a different tack this time and addressing many of the details first before the white coats and other larger areas of uniform. The eagle-eyed among you will notice that I've painted the (dark) red stocks of the enlisted men. Always a difficult and frustrating item to paint, it made sense to paint from the inside out as it were and get that particular detail out of the way first rather than try to paint it in later after much other painting has been accomplished. Trying to reduce the need for later retouching of other items on the figures you understand. Hopefully, I will be able to get back to these later today after a second trip back to the Apple Store for help with a couple of new iPad issues and, following the return home, some revision of Google Slides for tomorrow's meetings with my students. -- Stokes P.S. And according t...

And We're Off!!!

Arrrgh! Gotta go back into camera settings on my iPhone to bring all of the frame into focus. Blast! Painting is underway on the 60 or so Minden Austrians, which are slated to become my version of the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment of AWI renown. More or less indistinguishable from Austrians of the era really, right down to the red facings and turnbacks, but the eventual flags (already in my files) will set them apart. I went ahead and based-coated all of them over a couple of days lthe last week of August, using a mix of light gray and white acrylic gesso, before next applying my usual basic alkyd oil flesh tone to the faces and hands. In a day or two, I'll hit that with Army Painter Flesh Wash to tone things down a bit and bring some definition to the faces and hands. As usual, the plan is to focus on about 20 figures at a time, splitting the regiment roughly into thirds along with the color party and regimental staff. Depending on ...

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