A bit of actual painting progress to exhibit. . .

The first picture shows roughly one half of the final company of the regiment and its officer. They look pretty good after three evenings' of work if I do say so myself. There have been grumblings overheard in the rest of the unit that the fourth company is taking an awfully long time to be uniformed and equipped, so the quartermaster was "asked" by Colonel von Flickenhoffer to get a move on!

Believe it or not, I am actually back to doing something here that relates to figure painting/collecting/wargaming! Managed to get in a little over ninety minutes yesterday evening and got all of the breeches completed before (re-) watching *The Adventures of Priscilla: Queen of the Desert with the Grand Duchess. So, here are a few photographs for your viewing pleasure that show where we stand with the final 20 figures of the 80-figure Von Flickenhoffer's Fusiliers.

Here's a close-up of three men, er, figures, in the fourth company. I've been painting a bit more slowly this time around and using a smaller brush (a #2 round with a good point) on the vests and waistbelts, so those parts of the uniform are a bit neater and more distinct this time around. Of course, it could just be that after the first 60 or so figures in this monster regiment that my painting eye and skill have improved a wee bit.

And finally, here's another close-up of two figures -- one with the breeches done (on the right) and one without the breeches done. This picture is just included to give some idea of how my tw0-step undercoating process works to provide better definition and detail for figures painted in white uniforms. So it's on to the coats this evening, and then most of the white will be (mercifully) finished. Then, it's onto those smaller details like the mid-blue facings, and the browns that I nattered on about a day or two ago. Yes, it's good to be painting again!

*If you have not seen this wonderful movie, by all means do so. "Wild" does not begin to describe it.

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

Search This Blog