First Three Test Figures Completed. . .

Here is one photograph of the three figures in question. From left to right: A wash of Winsor & Newton Griffin Alkyd Oil Cadmium red; A wash of Cottman Watercolor Cadmium red; A wash of Speedball Acrylic Scarlet Red. In each case, I applied an undercoat of Humbral orange enamel before applying the red wash on top.

By popular request, here is a close-up of the three test figures. I now see a few areas in need of touching up, but they are basically done.

After some time spent adding more details to the last nine Minden hussars' horses, yesterday evening, I got to work on those first three RSM95 test figures. I'm fairly well pleased with how things have goone so far, but I am leaning toward the sample at far left, whose red coat was the result of a wash of Winsor-Newton Griffin Alkyd Oil (Cadmium Red) over an undercoat of Orange Humbrol. The orange shows through the red just enough give the coat an orange-ish scarlet hue.

The middle figure, painted with Cotman watercolor, and the figure at right, painted with Speedball ink, look nice, but the colors are so intense that the Humbrol orange undercoat does not show through at all although I used thinned washes here too. So, before I do anything else, I want to try two more test figures, one with a wash of red alkyd oil and another with the red watercolor (both over white undercoats) before I make my final decision. However, at present, I am leaning toward the figure at the far left right (oops!). . . the far left.

Incidentally, the uniforms worn by the infantry of the Free and Hanseatic cities of Luebeck (the model for the figures above), Bremen, and Hamburg during the 18th Century have the dual advantages of being both very colorful and easy to paint in short order. It's a shame we don't see more of them on wargaming tables.

Later. . .
It occurs to me that I might use the Speedball red ink as a shadow color (between torsos and arms) on top of the Winsor & Newton Alkyd Cadmium red. This is a bit more subtle than black lining, but I'll continue to use black lining against the white areas. Oh, and the shadow color on the figures' faces is from an old battle of Ral Partha "Leather."

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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