Painting Commences on Regiment of Huzzah Miniatures. . .

The 10th (Grand Duke Paul's) Regiment of Infantry -- known in the Stollenian army as the Fightin' 10th -- starts to take shape on the painting table. Obviously, they are named for our son, Young Master Paul, who was born late in the tenth month of 2009.

Just a quick post for now. Above is a photograph I took last night, showing the first company plus all officers, NCOs, musicians, and standard bearer glued temporarily to plastic bottle caps. They have been base-coated with black acrylic gesso, undercoated with black acrylic paint, had all fleshtone applied, and all green bases painted.

For added stability, I glued the mounted officer and his fleet-footed steed to a lozenge-shaped piece of thin plywood from an assorted bag of craft bits and pices of, well, thin plywood that I purchased a few years ago at Michael's, a chain of craft stores here in the United States that smell like cheap cinnamon scented candles and bayberry poupurie when you open the door. If you can stomach this potent, albeit artificial aroma for more than a few moments at a time, Michael's does sell all kinds of stuff that might have some potential use to wargamers, everything from paints and brushes, to balsa wood, foamcore board, glue and adhesives, hobby knives and blades, and so forth. But I digress!

As for this evening, it's yellow wasitcoats/vests and, time permitting, red facings and turnbacks. I'll say more about just how I like to paint faces tomorrow when I have a bit more time. I haven't forgotten your question from the other day, Jim. Until later then!

Comments

A J said…

I'm sure the young Grand Duke will be the proud inhaber of the regiment.

3:07 PM

Der Alte Fritz said…

I always like to paint at least one figure of a new unit from start to finish. This gives me some insights into how easy or difficult the figure will be to paint. Plus it provides me with a sort of painting guide for the rest of the figures in the group and serves as inspiration to finish the other figures.

4:22 PM

Frankfurter said…

So now, they're a legion of darkness?
:)
A

8:21 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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