Just a little painting a day. . .

So, the facings are now finished. Tonight, red breeches and, probably, the dark blue dry-brushing on the horses will follow. If time, I'll also quickly paint in the white wig on Colonel von Heide and the brown hair on the other two figures.

Keeps the mountain of lead and plastic at bay. Or something like that. Following our trip up to IKEA yesterday, we returned home yesterday evening and each enjoyed a few hours of personal time before settling in together, to watch Tootsie (1982) with Dustin Hoffman. Amazingly, I had never seen this particular movie before, and it was extremely funny. Dustin Hoffman truly is an amazing actor.

Anyway, I managed a bit more work on Colonel Heinrich von Heide and his regimental staff last night before movie time. First, the by-now-familiar tan undercoat, followed by white. The red facing color on the cuffs and skirt turnbacks followed. Not really much to look at just yet, but, to my eyes at least, the figures already appear much better than just a few days ago when they were a uniform black.

I've decided to paint the trumpeter in the same uniform as the rest of the men in Von Heide's Cuirassiers for the sake of speed. However, I will probably try to give him sleeve chevrons much later in the painting game, to offset him just a bit from all the rest of the unit. It is an imaginary unit after all, so I can take considerable leeway with the uniform color scheme and not worry too much about the historical veracity of things.

On that note, I initally toyed with the idea of dark green facings for the regiment. Dark green was apparently adopted as a facing color by a couple of Austrian cuirassier regiments in 1765, according to my Men-at-Arms volumn on the subject by Philip Haythornthwaite. In the end though, I decided that red on white is a more striking color combination. So, I opted for that color instead. Cuirassiers are, after all, as deserving of colorful, eye-catching uniforms as the hussars, don't you think?

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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

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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