Here's yet another helping of Stollen!

Meet General Hermann von Kallweitschen and Major Anders von Gedacht.

Just a quick post today because the Grand Duchess and I are preparing for a Swedish “midsommar” (or ABBA Fest as we call it) party, which we are throwing here tomorrow evening. We got the idea from our Minneapolis-based grad school friend “Swedish Allison”, the originator of the yearly ABBA Fest tradition. But that’s a whole different story. Anyway, we do this to put the Grand Duchess in better touch with her "Sweduality". Sonja is almost enitirely Swedish-American, although she is named for the Norwegian figure skater Sonja Henie.

Anyway, at the top of this post is an in-progress photo of the latest general in the service of the Electorate of Zichenau and his ADC. Meet General Hermann von Kallweitschen and Major Anders von Gedacht. Still lots to do, but you get the idea. RSM figures almost seem like they paint themselves. Wish it was always that easy!

Next, and especially for Jeff von Saxe-Bearstein, we have a couple of photos below, showing the new Huzzah miniatures next to RSM’s. As you can see, the two lines are exactly the same height and work quite well next to each other. The former is marketed as a 30mm line, while the latter, when it was Pax Britannica in the early 1980s, was also promoted as a true 30mm line.

According to Jim “Ale Fritz” Purky, the Huzzah figures are a bit too small next to his Stadden and Willie figures, which is the reason why he sold them to me, but Huzzah miniatures are fine next to RSMs. The size differential between RSM/Huzzah figures and my plastic Revell figures (in the left background below) is also acceptable – at least to me. And the price of Huzzah figures is good too even with the crummy US Dollar right now. About on par with Spencer Smith figures. So, I encourage you Stollen regulars to try out a unit or two with your own collections.

Finally, keep you elbows off the table! ;-) Kidding aside, there have been a number of encouraging remarks and questions about my painting progress tables, posted here the other day. Thank you everyone. The idea came to me like a bolt out of the blue a few nights ago. Early the next morning, I whipped up two quick tables in MS Word, filled in the requisite information, and then copied and pasted them into the blog posting. Easy! As additional units are completed and the next mini-project started, I’ll copy and paste updated tables into future blog entries.

Ok, that’s about it for today. I’ve got some errands to run and pictures to hang in the upstairs hall before our bike ride late this afternoon. Bis balt Männer!

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

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 ...

The Eventual Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment. . .

The Anhalt-Zerbst regiment musters in the drill square to sort themselves into platoons and companies during the coming weeks Fall maneuvers if you will. A large dose of real life the last few days with the start of classes next Monday, various preparatory meetings, and finishing up a few other things this week. But, I managed to sort out 60 or so Minden Austrian infantry from the pile and get 'em stuck to temporary painting bases. Must carefully drill out the hands of several NCOs for flagpoles and pole arms this weekend before the usual basecoat. I'm thinking of mixing the usual white gesso with the usual light gray to kill two birds with one stone so to speak. Applying both base- and undercoat in one fell swoop as my grandmother used to say. In the meantime, the recently finished squadron of Saxon cuirassiers has been placed carefully in one of the clear acrylic boxes on my shelves until I have the suitable flag to affix. -- Sto...

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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