Minden Hussar Update!!!

The most recently finished nine figures are those at the right rear of this photo -- eight troopers and an officer.

21 hussars down, nine to go! Let's see how much ground I can cover by November 5th, which is the painting challenge deadline, established by mutual consensus between myself and several other wargaming friends around the globe.

At the moment, the figures in question have been given their basecoats of three or four different shades of Humbrol glossy yellows, tans and browns. Tonight, I slop oil washes over these and set the figures aside to dry for 24 hours. Then, it's on to flesh and hair on the troopers before applying a white undercoat to those areas earmarked for later coats of red and light blue. And then lots and lots of yellow. . . braiding, facings, girdles, vandyking, etc., etc.

Here's another shot of the same formation, taken with the camera sitting on the table before the figures. It almost looks like they are charging right for me!

Finally, here's another high angle shot. Orson Welles look out! Funny how a few decent photographs will bring your figures to life.

Comments

Bluebear Jeff said…

Looking very good, Stokes. Keep those paint brushes moving!

-- Jeff

3:12 PM

Old School ACW said…

Smashing job old man.

7:42 PM

Mosstrooper said…

looking god !

1:27 AM

marinergrim said…

Excellent work.

5:15 AM

tidders2 said…

very nice, keep up the good work - you'll soon be finished

-- Allan

7:48 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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