I'm so happy it's finally Friday!

Sometimes, it's the little things in life that make you happy. And the end of the week, this week, is one of those things. Not only is it Friday, but it's the final day of classes this term. Hurrah! Now, if my head would simply clear up.

To mark the occasion, here's another image of Saint Nicholas, this time, French from 1900. Although this figure is, perhaps, much more familiar looking to many of us, he is still suitably old world and old-fashioned in appearance. The boughs of holly are a particularly nice touch too I think, but you don't want to tangle with the stuff, especially when it's dried out. It's like razor wire!

Comments

Bluebear Jeff said…

So how did the Grand Duchess like having chocolate in her slippers this morning?

-- Jeff

6:30 AM

Anonymous said…

We still have until tomorrow to get our ducks in a row for that.

The Feast of St. Nicholas is Dec. 6; and then we have just over a week to get our candle wreaths assembled for St. Lucia's on the 14th.

12:59 PM

tradgardmastare said…

Enjoy the hols - R&R ,the continued game and much more fun I'll venture!
best wishes
Alan

1:24 PM

Fitz-Badger said…

Good question, Jeff! Enquiring minds want to know ;-)
I know what you mean about the little things, Stokes (and for miniatures gamers that has extra meaning - lol).

7:41 PM

johnpreece said…

Hi Stokes,

I have enjoyed catching up on your blog, the army is coming together tremendously.

I love your new house especially in the snow. We seldom have porches or verandahs in Britain I quite envy you sitting out their on a summers evening with a mint julep.

2:42 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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