I must be crazy to bicycle 30 miles for ice cream in weather this hot!

Just a quick update this hot, hot, hot afternoon. I just finished the bronze scabbard tips, sword hilts, white waistbelts, and swordknots on the enlisted men as well as the bronze scabbard tips, sword hilts, silver sashes, hat tape, and sword knots on the NCOs and officers of Freiherr Wilhelm’s Pioneer Battalion. Besides the same sword related stuff, the battalion drummer got silver hat tape and a leather-colored apron too.

My partner in crime on Vancouver Island, Jeff von Saxe-Bearstein, asked several days ago about “hat tape”, and this unit will indeed have it. It just seems to make everything look a little more “finished” I think. Admittedly, this is a tedious step, and it's daunting when one has 30-60+ figures sitting on the table, looking up at you as if to say, "Well, where's our hat tape? Get on with it!"

Fortunately, only one small mistake this time around with and NCOs hat, and the problem was easily corrected by soaking up the misplaced paint with a damp brush. I can't count the number of times I've relied on Jim "Alte Fritz" Purkey's paint removal tip in the last year or so. It's been a real help.

Anyway, all that remains is the white hat tape for the enlisted men, the officer’s saddle cloth, and some nice, reddish-brown for his horse, which will be a “chestnut” this time. Hope to finish all this later this evening after a bike ride and dinner. Then, I can make a few touch-ups, apply the Future floor finish tomorrow, and we are all done. Photo update to follow once all work is completed. Stay tuned!

Comments

Bluebear Jeff said…

Stokes,

It depends upon the sculpting of course, but painting hat tape on most figures is very easy.

Don't use the tip of the brush. Instead run the side of the brush over the top edge of the hat brim.

With most figures this does a very nice job of delivering a nice thin line of paint for the tape.

Give it a try.

-- Jeff

8:30 PM

Steve-the-Wargamer said…

I'm with Stokes - I find the hat tape to be the worst part of the whole painting experience though I confess to also using Jeff's technique for doing it.... :o))

Stokes - can you share with us the paint removal technique you mentioned??

6:53 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

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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