Cuirassier Painting Update. . .

Managed to find about 90 minutes of painting time yesterday evening, and so beat a hasty retreat to Zum Stollenkeller for some time with the little metal men while the Grand Duchess spoke to her parents on the phone, and young David Paul I slept. As the Grand Ducal Feline lounged contentedly in my lap, I finished painting the tack on the horses: girths and stirrup leathers, using a ten-year-old bottle of Ral Partha "Leather Brown" that still flows nicely despite its age. Then, it was onto the stirrups, bits, and silver/brass buckles on the halters and reins, for which I used newer bottles of Citadel's (ex- Games Workshop) "Mithril Silver" and bronze. So, the horses are basically finished for the second squadron of nine figures, barring a few of those inevitable touch-ups. Grrrrrrr. . .

Next up, the white gauntlets, tunics, and shoulder belts on those same officer and troopers. Then, it's on to the red facings and saddle cloths. Hopefully, I'll get some more painting time in before too many days go by, but there is a batch of student papers that needs to be finished by this evening, and then the usual parental things too. By the way, I'm amazed at how fast I can change a diaper now! Who would have thought? Anyway, I'll have a photo update on the cuirassiers once I get my computer back and set it up again. Hopefully, Tech Services will have finished debugging it by Monday morning (tomorrow). Gee, and they have only had it for three weeks!

Comments

Bluebear Jeff said…

Ah, Stokes . . . you had me worried there for a moment.

You were writing about how fast you could change a diaper . . . and then about a photo update . . .

Photos of the cuirassiers, yes . . . but please no photos of the diaper changing.

*grin*

-- Jeff

3:30 PM

WSTKS-FM Worldwide said…

Jeff,

Rest assured, NO photos of diaper changing will appear here! That's a new area of my life that I'd just as soon pretend didn't exist.

Best Regards,

Stokes

3:52 PM

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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