While the Grand Duchess is away. . . playing Mah Jong no less. . .

From left to right: The regimental inhaber Herr Colonel Heinrich von Heide along with his standard bearer and trumpeter. These are going to be a fun bunch of figures to paint and a nice change after all of that white-coated infantry last spring and summer.

Imagine! The nerve! So, obviously I have had a couple of hours to myself this evening. And what better way to spend that spare time than working on some RSM95 wargaming miniatures.

Just a little bit of painting on the first three figures tonight: green bases, the faces, and a quick coat of Liquitex black acrylic paint on the horses and tricornes. I like the blue-black of this particular color -- very suitable for noble cuirassier steeds. It dries quickly with a nice sheen and a stretchy surface, so it stands up well to handling and doesn't flake off of metal or plastic figures. An added benfit of Liquitex is that it helps prevent the black gesso undercoat from rubbing off the ears and muzzles of the horses plus the boot toes of the troopers before I finish everything and slap on a couple of protective coats of Future/Klear acrylic floor finish.

So, only about 60 minutes of work this evening while listening to Croatian Radio on shortwave -- in Croatian, English, and Spanish no less -- but it's really amazing what you can accomplish in a week's time if you make yourself sit down for an hour or two each evening. Marathon painting sessions can be very productive and a great deal of fun, and I certainly enjoyed them at 17 or 18, but I suspect that consistent regular painting is far more productive and produces faster results.

The great love of my life, the fair Grand Duchess Sonja, and I are of to the Chicago suburbs tomorrow to visit. . . Yes! The fantastic mid-blue and yellow IKEA!!! Always a fun trip and after ABBA, Gustavus Adolphus, and our old grad school friend Helena up in Minnesota, possibly Sweden's greatest contribution to the world! ;-)

P.S.
And let's not forget the late, great Holger Eriksson either!

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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