An hour with the hussars!

Sounds like a grand book title, doesn't it? Anyway, I managed to get in a bit of time late this afternoon before dinner with the Grand Duchess. You'll see that I've colored the saddlecloths and mirliton wings crimson. I also completed the hair on the troopers and two officers, The former have plain brown while the latter have the usual "powdered" white. I also had enough time to apply the yellow lace to the trumpeter's saddlecloth. Troopers will have yellow lace, officers gold.

Now, I have a questions for those of you with more experience painting 18th century hussars. Was the top of the felt/cloth mirlton colored? Or was the rest of this peculiar headwear, besides the wing, left black? I'd sure appreciate any information you might be able to provide. None of the various books I have on the subject provide any information, visual or text description, on the matter. Thanks in advance for your help. And now, unfortunately, it's on to a stack of student papers. But I'll revisit Battlegames #14 later as a reward for my pains!

Comments

MurdocK said…

I have found some images to answer your Mirlton question Stokes.

Check out: MurdockS MarauderS

1:07 AM

tradgardmastare said…

Excellent work Sir!I await their riding across the table with enthusiasm.
best wishes
Alan
p.s thanks for answering my fantasy question.

2:20 AM

abdul666 said…

A grand book title... or a confessed wish from some (Monte-Cristan?) lady?
Now, let other Arms of Service ignore envy: we have in France a traditional song from Lace Wars times about "La Marquise et les 80 Chasseurs"...
Hour hussars look more and more glamorous!
Cheers,
Jean-Louis
--
to be honest 'Chasseurs' in this song means 'hunters', NOT 'Jaegers', alas...

9:07 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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