For whom does the bell toll?

I've been carefully cutting out pieces of heavy cardboard, making mistakes, and trying again the past couple of days. The goal? To produce something that looks like the Lubeck Rathaus, or part of it, at the far right in the photograph above. One of the tricks is getting the five little vertical feaux-towers right. Another is keeping the "footprint" of the building small, so it does not take up too much room on the tabletop. I'm thinking about 3 1/2" by 2".

Well, for me. Kind of. Summer vacation is sadly OVER, and my first class of the fall term is in a little less than three hours at 9am. On the bright side, I have a new pair of shiny black tassled loafers (I know, I know) to put on with a newly cleaned and pressed suit, so it's not all bad I suppose. ;-) And it's a film class, so I'll get to talk about movies in very general terms this morning before we get down to real business on Wednesday.

It has been a wonderful summer, but not as much painting as I'd hoped or intended. Still, there were a couple of tabletop games (and another is in the making) and lots of time with the Grand Duchess and Young Master Paul (ten months old in a few days), so I suppose that's a reasonable trade-off. The painting gears are, however, clanking slowly back into motion here at Stollen Central, I've been writing some wargaming-related stuff, and experimenting with reproducing in miniature one or two delightfully Gothic buildings from the North German Free Hanseatic City of Lubeck. I thought that another couple of official looking structures, built along Grantian lines (i.e., a lift-off shell with balsa ruins that can be occupied by half a company of infantry), might be a good thing to have on the table.

Other developments? Ah, yes. Clive over at the Vintage Wargaming blog has asked me to mention this for him. Seems he has a large number of the plastic 1/72 Revell Seven Years War Austrians and Prussians that he'd like to sell off. If any of you Stollen regulars or irregulars are interested, please contact him via his blog at: Vintage Wargaming.

Finally, I won't be posting to the Grand Duchy of Stollen blog quite as often in the coming weeks and months since it occurred to me mid-summer that endless blathering, errrr, blogging can easily interfere with painting and gaming, and there are only so many hours in a day. So, I have decided to restrict myself to a single post a week -- Ok, maybe two if there is a lot happening -- and get on with the painting since completion of my initial Sittangbad-size forces is within sight (just a few more units). So, stay tuned, and I'll see you in week's time!

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

Fitz-Badger said…

For the little towers maybe you could use plastic tubes (such as the kind used for cheap pens), given the footprint size you mentioned. Or if you prefer to use wood, dowels or half-round molding.

6:48 PM

Martin said…

Hi Stokes (You black tassel loafered Professor you!)

Make one tower as per Fitz-Badger, and use it as a master to mold however many others you need.

Keep us posted on the latest developments.

Martin

10:09 PM

Anonymous said…

You will let us see the result won't you Stokes?

Steve.

1:20 AM

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