Leib Grenadiers Underway

Hey there all you regular Grand Duchy of Stollen visitors! Yes, I'm back in the saddle and hard at work on the RSM95 figures, soon to be the Leib (Grand Duchess of Sonja's Own) Grenadier Regiment.

So far, I've only managed to paint the bases green and the coats light blue on the first 24 figures. You can see how it's going from the accompanying photograph at right.

In the next few painting sessions, I intend to paint the faces, white wigs, red small clothes, and red facings (liight blue for the company drummer at the rear). White gaiters for all will follow.

As many have metnoned ove at Yahoo's Old School Wargaming discussion board, RSM figures really are a pleasure to paint. Can't remember when painting seemed to progress so easily. I think it was during the very early 1980s, when I was painting chunky old Grenadier 25mm D&D figures and making up a different painting scheme for each figure. Ah, memories. . .

By the way, there have now been over 6800 visits to The Grand Duchy of Stollen since last August. I think the Grand Duke Irwin Amadeus II should seriously consider setting up a board of tourism! Seriously though, a sincere and hearty "thank you" to all who have taken an interest in the goings on here in Stollen and regularly take a few minutes to drop by. It's much appreciated.

Comments

Bluebear Jeff said…

Welcome back! I have missed reading your posts . . . and I'm sure that others have as well.

Looking forward to future reports on this unit and your experiences as you paint them.

-- Jeff

9:43 PM

marinergrim said…

Good to see you back safe and sound.

2:54 AM

WSTKS-FM Worldwide said…

Thank you men! It is indeed good to be back.

Best Regards,

Stokes

5:14 AM

Snickering Corpses said…

Welcome back indeed. I look forward to seeing more of your work as it progresses.

Also, you'll find a reply to Stollen from our last correspondence about 3 posts down on the Engelburg blog.

You should read Jeff's comments on it too. :>

7:28 AM

Bloggerator said…

Hi Stokes,

Good to see those RSMs are progressing nicely!

I'm not familiar with that standard-bearer; which range is he from? I'd like to get my paws on some.

Regards,

Greg

3:41 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

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