Lunch at the Brummen und Summen. . .

A few of the Grand Duke's fellow clubmembers deep in conversation at Krankenstadt's Brummen und Summen, a private social organization for gentlemen of independent means.

While the Grand Duke waits for five or ten minutes to be shown to his table in the dining room at the Brummen und Summen, his mind wanders back over the painting of the last few days:

Hmmm. . . . Most of the thirty horses have been undercoated and covered with an oil glaze. Humbrol orange is certainly NOT a good undercoat though the other brown and tan enamels are. No. I've had to redo the undercoats of a few really orange horses that have come out looking like Yahoo Serious.

Yes. Burnt Umber and Burnt Sienna seem to be the best oils in my collection of tubes for the glazes. A shame I can't unscrew the blasted cap from the tube of Raw Umber though. Must remember to add a few bay-colored steeds to the mix. I'll use thinned Payne's Grey to stain some lower legs, manes, and tails. Should be fairly easy.

What else? Let's see. . . Oh, yes. Now it's time to apply fleshtone to the faces and paint the figure bases green. That's always a quick and easy step. Fun too. But there's still the question of whether, or not to paint the horse furniture or leave just the impression of it. Yes. . . It would certainly save considerable time and be much easier. And then I could get on to painting the officers and troopers of the regimental staff and that first squadron.

I'm sorry? What? Oh, please excuse me. I was thinking of something else. Yes. Another five or ten minutes? You're joking. I see. Um, no. But I have a table here. . .

Comments

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

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...

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 ...

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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