Dragoons and Oberfeldwebel Klatschen FINISHED!

Yes, you saw right. The regiment of cavalry the 4th (Trakehnen) Dragoons -- 30 figures strong -- and Oberfeldwebel Lebrecht Klatschen of the Leib (Grand Duchess Sonja's Own) Grenadier Regiment are finished. And it only took slightly more than a month for the former. The clear coat of Future floor polish will follow on Saturday.

My poor Grand Duchess must catch up with her grading of midterms and so forth all weekend, so I'll have some extra time to slop on the Future and apply a basecoat plus black undercoat for that first batch of RSM grenadiers that I've nattered on about for two months or so. If everything goes well Saturday, I might even start applying flesh tone and other colors to the figures on Sunday. We'll see.

If you look closely at the Oberfeldwebel Klatschen, you'll notice that I've performed a few minor "touch ups" -- cleaning up where his right shoe meets the accompanying gaiter (there was previous a bit of white paint og the shoe). And though you can't see it in this photo, the inside of his right thigh needed another coat of red as there was an odd looking dark spot that I noticed previously in one of the earlier photographs posted here.

Finally, I also painted the pom-pom on his mitre cap, dividing it into two red quarters and two white. Won't trouble myself doing this for the rest of the rankers or NCOs of the grenadiers, but since Klatshen is a special "personality" figure, I wanted to make sure that he is relatively easy to find on the table top among all of the other similarly uniformed men of his regiment. And as the Regimental Sergeant Major, it also made sense to give him slightly fancier headgear.

Now, when I work on the RSM figures over the next 5-6 weeks, I'll make sure to keep careful track of how many hours I work on them. This will provide a solid idea of the hours required to paint a 60+ figure unit to a reasonable standard. I took extensive notes during the work on the dragoons, but neglected to note total hours worked. Just an interesting aside that many besides me surely must have thought of but never discussed. At least not that I've seen. Enjoy the evening!

P.S.

Hell and damnation!!! I've just spotted one cuff that needs yellow paint on one of the dragoon figures! Can you find him?

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...

Basic Reds Done at Last. . .

S till quite a way to go with the current batch of 20 human figures and a horse (of course), but they're actually starting to look like something after all of the red distinctions. Quite a bit of painting in hour-long sessions the last week as and when time has allowed. Mostly applying the basic dark red to facing areas and turnbacks followed by the inevitable touch-ups to clean up wobbly edges and those misplaced, minute splotches of Citadel Khorne Red. They're looking like so many Austrian infantry regiments of the era at this point, but the eventual flags will turn them magically into the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment, more or less, of the AWI period. But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. One frustrating point (ahem) of sad discovery. I've started trying to use those Winsor & Newton 'Series Seven' brushes (#1 rounds) purchased last spring, and the blasted things simply will not keep a point. Very frustrating since I have heard over the y...

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

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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