Our First Snow of the Season!!!

Wish we had a scene like this one in our backyard. This is very similar to the woods in Norway, about five minutes from where I lived in Trondheim, where I learned to ski ten years ago.

Relax. Just a dusting. Maybe an inch/25mm or so, but it was beautiful when I peeked through the blinds at the still dark street (it's just after 6am here) a little while ago. Just what we need to kick off the week here at Stollen Central.

Speaking of which. I had a serious talk with the Grand Duchess yesterday and laid down the law. Told her I surely wouldn't make it to Christmas without some of her delicious Dresdner Stollen. So, I finally was able to extract that most important of promises from her. . . Stollen baking to commence next weekend. Hurrah! The clouds lifted and I retired to bed a happy man.

On the soldier painting front, I took a wee bit of time after dinner, while Young Paul slept close by, and began work on the flamboyant General von Tschatschke. So far, a chestnut horse, pink coat and breeches with purple waistcoat and saddle cloth. Still lots to do, of course, but the good General looks stunning already. Have a wonderful day everyone!

Comments

guy said…

Every time the main weather report and map comes on the BBC they always show a slice of Norway and for the last week or so it seems to have been snowing constantly. I'm sure the skiing will be good there this season. We normally head to the Alps but the girls are now at different schools and v inconsiderently their school holidays do not overlap to a reasonable degree so we are still at the planning stage.

regards,
Guy

5:04 AM

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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