Grand Duke Irwin-Amadeus II and the Stollenian Coat of Arms

Here’s a recently finished portrait of the Grand Duke Irwin-Amadeus II, current ruler of the Grand Duchy of Stollen. Now, it’s said that the Grand Duke wished to be portrayed wearing his beloved lobster costume, complete with various orders of merit pinned to his chest. However the artist commissioned to paint Irwin-Amadeus, one Herr Maleri, felt that it might be better to portray the slightly misguided grand duke along more conventional lines. Hence the rather typical mid-eighteenth century portraiture we see before us here.

This is also a good time to offer some explanation behind the grand ducal standard posted below. The eagle-eyed among you will note that the red and white lion in the center of the standard is the familiar Hessian lion. In fact, the Stollenian dynasty descends from the same family that rules Hesse-Kassel. Stollen’s Irwin-Amadeus II is indeed a very distant cousin of Friedrich II, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel since 1760.

Various second, third, and subsequent sons of the Hessian dynasty were involved in the northern crusades of the middle ages, under the auspices of Teutonic Knights, which moved eastward to “Christianize” the peoples of Northeastern Europe, leading to the establishment of the Grand Duchy of Stollen in 1230 A. D. Grand Duke Konrad- Albrecht I was first ruler of Stollen, and he was Irwin-Amadeus’s direct ancestor. The extended royal family of Stollen also has ties to the ruling houses of Denmark and Sweden besides Hesse-Kassel.

The royal colors of Stollen are a mid- to light blue and orange. Both are part of the grand ducal standard. These same colors are also seen frequently in the uniforms and battle flags of Stollen’s troops, for example the orange facings of the 2^nd (Von Laurenz) Musketeers or the light blue coats of the Leib (Grand Duchess Sonja’s Own) Grenadiers, as well as the corner vents of that regiment’s standard. Ok, now I’ve got to get back into the painting mode and get going with that 80+ figure regiment of Revell plastic Austrian grenadiers.

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

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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