A Little Snowy Painting

When school has been called off, and an old fashioned blizzard keeps you inside, what do you do? That's a silly question! You get a big mug of hot cocoa and head for the painting desk.

Sonja took advantage of her free day to catch up reading articles. I totally slagged off and began work on the third squadron of dragoons. Doesn't the regiment look nice all lined up there on the table?

I really want to make a push and get these babies finished in the next week or so. Once I've passed the halfway point with the painting of a unit, I find that the early enthusiasm kicks back in. Plus I want to start on the regiment of RSM95 grenadiers. Charge!!!

P.S.

Almost forgot to mention that I discovered a site today where one can create and download a PDF of square graph paper, hex sheets, and a number of other types of grids . It occurred to me that this might have all kinds of campaign uses. Visit:

www.incompetech.com

I printed a single sheet og 0.5 cm hexagons on a piece of heavy white stationary, so the inks wouldn't run, and then superimposed my campaign area map on top of the grid. It looks pretty good. My plan is to make each hex about 10-12 miles across (the average daily march rate, I think) for 18th century armies. This will make the calculation of move distances much easier without making the campaign area too vast. After all, we must keep Stollen, Zichenau, et al inconspiculously sandwiched between extreme eastern Prussia, Courland, Livland, Poland, and Russia!

Comments

Mr. Fox said…

Wow that hex paper generator is great!!!! I'll have some printed out and start drawing in no time...

DwarfMan
Prince Henry of Anthro-Paphburg

9:56 PM

marinergrim said…

I want to sit and paint too. I have a resl bug (my wife says withdrawl symptoms) because I've not painted anything for two days now.

2:05 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

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 ...

The Eventual Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment. . .

The Anhalt-Zerbst regiment musters in the drill square to sort themselves into platoons and companies during the coming weeks Fall maneuvers if you will. A large dose of real life the last few days with the start of classes next Monday, various preparatory meetings, and finishing up a few other things this week. But, I managed to sort out 60 or so Minden Austrian infantry from the pile and get 'em stuck to temporary painting bases. Must carefully drill out the hands of several NCOs for flagpoles and pole arms this weekend before the usual basecoat. I'm thinking of mixing the usual white gesso with the usual light gray to kill two birds with one stone so to speak. Applying both base- and undercoat in one fell swoop as my grandmother used to say. In the meantime, the recently finished squadron of Saxon cuirassiers has been placed carefully in one of the clear acrylic boxes on my shelves until I have the suitable flag to affix. -- Sto...

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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