Dragoons Just About There

No painting this evening as the Grand Duchess Sonja and I are heading to a movie after supper. But, here's a photo taken yesterday evening of the regiment in question. Just a couple more minor things to take care of, and then they are ready for the protective coat of Future floor polish and a place of honor -- the senior most regiment of Stollen's cavalry, commanded by that dastardly cad Colonel Von Cranz.

Rumor has it that a rivalry of sorts exists between Oberfeldwebel Klatschen and Von Cranz. Indeed, on more than one occasion, the two have crossed paths. But for all of his arrogant, peevish bluster, Von Cranz knows little about war, personal combat, or honor. Whenever the two meet, Von Cranz inevitably has his ears boxed soundly by the grizzled Oberfeldwebel. And what the young colonel knows about campaigning wouldn't even be a drop in the coffee stein of knowledge that Klatschen has aquired in his years of service to Stollen. And when will the grenadier next take Von Cranz down a peg or two? Keep tuning in here to find out!

Comments

Bluebear Jeff said…

I'm tuned, I'm tuned. Will there be a duel? Will one be struck down? Or will one turn away?

I'm staying tuned . . . why aren't you?

-- Jeff

8:04 PM

Snickering Corpses said…

I'm tuned as well. I love the personalities there.

I'm hoping to get time for a reply from Hesse-Engelburg to Stollen's latest tomorrow. Or perhaps I'll stick to history and make it on Thursday again. Mr. Strasser's getting a workout.

I'm also hoping to post about a tourist destination, and the regiment it has spawned, in the next couple of days.

10:18 PM

old-tidders said…

Nice looking regiment.

6:43 AM

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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