The Best Laid Plans. . .

Sigh. Sometimes the best intentions get waylaid druing the course of life! Although I have finally managed to get my first batch of RSM grenadiers base coated with acrylic gesso and then undercoated with black acrylic paint, I've not been able to get to the actual painting this week as hoped. Now, it's early Saturday morning, and I've got to catch the shuttle up to O'Hare in Chicago in about 90 minutes for an early afternoon flight. I'll be gone for a week.

"A week without painting he says. Can he survive? Or will it feel as if he's got bugs crawling all over his skin?"

Well, I don't know. We'll have to see. ;-) But maybe a few days away are good? Sort of an enforced break, which hopefully will allow me to return full of new painting vigor, all fired up and ready to go. Until then, Stollen's Leib (Grand Duchess Sonja's Own) Grenadiers remain at attention on my painting/radio desk.

Comments

Bluebear Jeff said…

Oh no, I was looking forward to reading about how you found the RSM figures to paint.

Now I have to wait at least a week . . . ack!

Well, I hope that you have a good trip and that you will soon be able to get back to painting.

-- Jeff

3:54 PM

marinergrim said…

Give my regards to the Windy City and wave at soldier field as you fly over it.
Safe journey.

At least you can keep busy by working over the painting just like pro sportsmen do in training!

3:07 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 ...

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...

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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