Everywhere you look, it's dragoon, dragoons, dragoons!

Yesterday afternoon, I finished the three 25mm MiniFigs representing Grand Duke Irwin-Amadeus II, his second in command General Von Maur, and their mounted aide de camp -- the glorious hussar Captain Rudolf-Michael Von Schenker. Two coats of Future floor finish will ensure that my paintwork lasts, and it makes the figures nice and shiny, a look that I am really taking to.

Don’t know why I avoided the glossy look for so long, since I used to love the appearance of Peter Gilder’s glossy figures in photos adorning various old issues of Miniature Wagaming and Military Modeling. Suffice to say, my three figures look great and photos are coming right here. Stay tuned!

Then last night, I moved on to the dragoon regiment sitting on my painting/radio desk, made up of Revell 1/72 Austrian dragoons, drilling tiny holes into each trooper and horse with my pin vise, clipping staples to use as pins, and then pinning each trooper to his mount. A time consuming process, I can assure you! Hopefully, I can finish this arduous process in the next evening or two and cement the two together x 30 because I want to get started with the fun part – painting!

On that note, I’m going to try something a bit different this time – I’ll begin with a coat of Future floor finish over the bare plastic to stiffen the figures, followed by the usual coat of white glue. The black undercoat will follow last of all. My usual thick application of black Liquitex acrylic, which shrinks as it dries, forming a nice skin around the figure. This three tiered process should provide a nice solid base on which the paint can stick. Finally, I’ll be able to paint the little devils!

Once I finish Stollen’s dragoons, then it’s time to paint up a comparably sized force for the Electorate of Zichenau. These figures will be primarily white-coated infantry with different facing colors. The artillery, cavalry, and generals will have more interesting colors for their coats. If all goes well, I should have this stage done by early summer 2007 and a small initial action between the two armies will become a reality. We’ll see how that progresses. But for now, it’s back to the regiment of dragoons!

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 ...

Sunday Morning Coffee with AI. . .

A rmed with a second cup of fresh, strong coffee, I messed around a bit this morning with artlist.io using its image to image function in an attempt to convert my hand-drawn map from September 2006 to something that more resembles an old map from the mid-18th century. And just like my experiments with Ninja AI in June, the results are mixed. The above map is pretty good, but Artlist keeps fouling up the place names and has trouble putting a faint overlay of hexes across the entire area. Hexes, admittedly, are not likely to be found on any genuine maps from the era in question, but there we are. Frankly, I prefer the appearance of the Ninja map, but there were problems getting it to correct its errors. Grrrr. As is the case with so much having to do with the various AI's out there now, the output generated is a direct result of the prompts entered. For text alone, and when you develop a lengthy, highly detailed prompt, it is...

Continued Regional Map Revisions. . .

F ooled around a bit more with the revised map just before and after dinner this evening, using the Fotor app to reinsert missing text . I also removed a few other things using the 'Magic Eraser' function, which works surprisingly well. Now, we're getting somewhere. I just have to figure out how to ensure that the text is all a uniform font style and maybe figure out a way to add a few bunches of trees to suggest forested areas, Ninja AI is not always entirely cooperative to the tune of "I'm sorry Dave. I can't do that." -- Stokes

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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