The Grand Duchy of Stollen Appoints a Minister of Tourism and Travel

8000+ visits have been registered at the Grand Duchy of Stollen since the creation of this blog last August! Thank you again to all of the duchy’s regular tourists, fans, well-wishers, and enthusiasts. The duchy would be a dull place without your visits, observations, and assistance. And certainly not as exciting and intrigue-riddled a place for the newly appointed Minister of Tourism and Travel, one Herr Peter-Erich von Eulenspiegel -- “Rotten Peter” to his enemies, and there are many!

Looks like Stollen’s Leib (Grand Duchess of Sonja’s Own) Grenadiers will have their first whiff of black powder sometime next fall when they will follow their Grand Duke Irwin-Amadeus II, sans his lobster costume, north to one of the annual Charge!/BIG Battalion games put on by Bill Protz, Jim Purky, et al in the Northern Chicago suburbs. I’ll have them all painted well before then, and I’m sorely tempted to add another 20 figures, so that the grenadiers will have a four-company establishment of over 80 miniatures.

Back to the present though. The spring semester is almost over, and wouldn’t you know. . . I’ve finally succumbed to a minor case of the flu with a slight fever :-(. I don’t think one can teach at any level without picking up something unpleasant in the air from one’s students. So, I have not felt like doing any painting at all for the last few days. Sigh. I’m slightly better today, so maybe by Thursday evening, I’ll be up to working for a couple-three hours or so? We’ll see. Cross your fingers in the meantime!

Comments

Snickering Corpses said…

Sorry to hear about your flu, Stokes. It is indeed a hazard of the profession, I think, but still a nuisance. I do hope you'll continue improving quickly.

9:40 PM

Bluebear Jeff said…

Sorry to hear about your flu. One of the things that I do when I'm under the weather and not able to paint is to think about or work on terrain.

Using balsa-clad foam-core, I'll make buildings; or I'll work on some trees; or some such. It helps pass the time (and the terrain becomes very useful) without needing the concentration that figure painting requires.

-- Jeff

3:04 AM

marinergrim said…

Fully sympathise with your condition. as someone who has been battling a hacking cough for the last two weeks it is difficult to be enthused to paint.
It will get better of course.
just in time for the hay fever season!

5:27 AM

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

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