Skip to main content

Grand Duchy of Stollen Project Progress as of May 14, 2009. . .


Well, Blogger still refused to accept my HTML (Aaagghh!!!), so I've simply printed, scanned, and uploaded my chart as a jpeg picture. Not quite as nice looking as I had hoped, but it presents all of the vital information anyway.

As you can see, there is still quite a way to go before the initial Sittangbad-sized forces are complete. Note to self -- get off of lazy you-know-what and get moving on return from Germany in July! Still, I can probably finish the fourth company of von Flickenhoffer's Fusiliers in the next three weeks once my May Term film course finishes.

In July, it's onward to the regiment of RSM cuirassiers that has been sitting on my painting desk since last November when I purchased them as a birthday gift to myself (and in celebration of last year's article in Battlegames). These will be followed by more (as yet unporuchased) artillery, another 30-figure unit of cavalry, and then another 60-figure unit of infantry, hopefully before year's end. Keep your fingers crossed!

As far as the cuirassiers are concerned, I recently took the time to measure, cut out, and attached thin carboard bases to the horse figures for added stability. Still need to purchase a small tube of epoxy and attatch the officers, tumpeter, and troopers to their mounts. At the moment though, they are nicely lined up in their repsective squadrons just to the left of where I sit to paint over at the radio/painting table. When the time comes, I have a few neat ideas in mind for the curassier's regimental standard too.

I also took delivery of several new shades of brown Citadel paints (nee Games Workshop) along with a new bottle of black a couple of weeks ago. I now have a lovely new shade of dark brown, which I will apply to most opf the cuirassier mounts although a few will be left black and carefully drybrushed with dark blue. The latter is a nice way of producing "black" horses. I'm eager to get going on these figures, but that will have to wait until the 80-figure unit of fusiliers is all finished, and we have returned from our German sojourn mid-summer.

Comments

Capt Bill said…
Excellent tip on how to publish a chart. I have never been able to tab columns into line. Thanks, also, for the idea of dry brushing dark blue on black horses, I'll try it....
Fitz-Badger said…
That should be a very impressive couple of armies by the time you're time (heck, they're impressive now! lol).
I always find large masses of black tricky to get right. Solid black doesn't quite cut it. Highlighting with gray ends up making it look dark gray rather than black. I think I'll try the blue highlight next time I need to paint something black. If I were doing something like a black cat (panther?) I might try a very subtle brown highlight, as black cats do look a bit brown in strong light.
You teach film noir in your film classes, right? I recently bought the complete Thin Man dvd set. I watched the first one, The Thin Man, last weekend. Fun and excellent film!

Popular posts from this blog

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...

Basic Reds Done at Last. . .

  S till quite a way to go with the current batch of 20 human figures and a horse (of course), but they're actually starting to look like something after all of the red distinctions.  Quite a bit of painting in hour-long sessions the last week as and when time has allowed.  Mostly applying the basic dark red to facing areas and turnbacks followed by the inevitable touch-ups to clean up wobbly edges and those misplaced, minute splotches of Citadel Khorne Red.   They're looking like so many Austrian infantry regiments of the era at this point, but the eventual flags will turn them magically into the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment, more or less, of the AWI period.  But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. One frustrating point (ahem) of sad discovery.  I've started trying to use those Winsor & Newton 'Series Seven' brushes (#1 rounds) purchased last spring, and the blasted things simply will not keep a point.  Very frustrating since I have heard over the y...

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