Let the Painting Begin!

Well, despite the general business of the first two weeks of a new academic term and a slight head cold, I’ve managed to get all 80 of the 1/72 Revell Austrian grenadiers basecoated with Liquitex artists acrylic gesso and undercoated with Liquitex black acrylic paint. Both flex quite well, without any flaking or peeling when I bend muskets and officers' polearms without mercy. Exactly what we want!

Besides a picture of the entire regiment, I’ve again included another of the English mercenary officer who commands this regiment – Colonel Augustus Finknottle (there are rumors afoot that suggest the ruler of Zichenau will shortly confer an honorary "von" prefix on Colonel Finknottle in return for certain favors he once provided to her). I’ve had a few nice comments from some of you on the bearing and demeanor of this fine figure. . . as are only befitting an English gentleman, you know. ;-)

We have a three day weekend coming up here in the U.S.A. (The Labor Day Weekend -- traditionally seen as the end of Summer), so I plan to begin work on the first company (19) and regimental staff (4 -- mounted colonel, adjutant, standard bearer, and Regimental Sergeant Major). Hopefully, I can manage to complete the green bases, hands and faces, and white coats by Monday evening. Keep your fingers crossed!

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

Search This Blog