Slowly getting there with the final company of fusiliers. . .

Well, along with planning the painting of "the nursery", making another batch of slow-cooked North Carolina pulled pork BBQ with red slaw (an all day process), and weathering the hottest weather we've had all summer, I have managed to do a bit more painting on that final batch of RSM Prussian fusiliers this weekend -- shoulder belts, musket stocks, barrels, and bayonets, musket straps, hair and mustaches, plus some additional metal bits and pieces that aren't really visible here. Basically all that's left are the mid-blue facings, the white ruffles at the front on the men's necks, and the rest of the metal trim on the fusilier caps.

Here's a close-up shot of two figures, front and back, which gives a better idea of what I describe above. The green shoulder strap denotes the fourth company. The first, second, and third companies have red, blue, and white shoulder straps respectively. Not exactly historical, but it helps me to keep things more organized in my painting, storage, and on the table top.

Last, here's a shot of the entire regiment -- the 7th (Von Flickenhoffer's) Fusiliers. Can't wait to post a picture or two of the entire finished regiment of 80-figures. Yes, 80-figures. Don't try this at home, kids!

Looking ahead, the RSM95 Austrian cuirassiers off to the right of the picture are the next unit in the painting queue. They've been sitting around on my desk since last November, so I'm eager to get going with them. And I think I'll paint them as -- wait for it -- Austrian cuirassiers! I just like the white and madder red uniforms. The color scheme is, frankly, better than anything I could dream up myself. Of course, you know that I'll give the regiment some kind of imaginary and vaguely humorous title, don't you?

Ok, it's off to bed with me now. We have a Spanish comedy on DVD to watch courtesy of NetFlix. Sleep well everyone!!!

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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