Princess Antonia's Personal Reply to de Latte. . .

30 July 1768

My Dear de Latté,

Thank you for your communication of the 30^th instant. I am pleased to know that your plans do include actually advancing on Krankenstadt sometime before the current campaigning season ends. It is imperative that you do so as soon as possible! Irwin-Amadeus must be brought to justice! The Duchy of Schleiz must be returned to its rightful monarch. . . namely me. And it must happen before the winter snows drift across the frozen River Zwischen. Our territorial integrity depends entirely on you, de Latté. Do not let Us down!

As for your other news, yes, by all means “groom” the young von Meckern. I am quite certain we can find some way to employ him beyond the fields of Mars. Summer is warm and tiresome here at my summer residence, Liebhaberinske, and I grow weary of the affairs of state. My ministers and staff all patronize me, and I have no real person to entertain me. It is a peculiar kind of ennui from which I suffer always at this time of year. Perhaps the young von Meckern is just the antidote? He is a handsome specimen I trust? At the very least, von Meckern might be useful in the acquisition of certain information about Stollen. We can discuss the particulars when next you visit me here in three weeks’ time.

Fondly,

“Toni”

Comments

Bluebear Jeff said…

I suspect that soon the new game table in Zum Stollenkeller will be "Christened" with it's first battle.

May the Lobster Claws arise in defense of the homeland!

-- Jeff of Saxe-Bearstein

3:25 AM

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

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...

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 Grand Duchy of Stollen

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