More Minden Hussars. . .

A slow week painting-wise, but I've made good progress on the final nine figures in that ongoing 30-figure regiment since Friday evening. Sill lots to do, but the back of the project is broken, and my motivation is reasonably high to get these darn things finished and move on to the final infantry unit in Phase One of the Grand Duchy of Stollen Project.

Anyway, grandiose language aside, you can see where I am with the little darlings as of Sunday afternoon here in the American Midwest. If the mood strikes me this evening after supper and Young Master Paul's bedtime, I might do the white markings on the horses' legs and muzzles plus the leather girths and maybe, just maybe, the stirrup leathers. Of course, I'm deviating a bit from my usual painting routine, but it sometimes helps to do this when the tedium demon strikes and does his worst to derail the painting of a large unit.

Comments

Conrad Kinch said…

God bless the work - keep it up Stokes.

Any sniff of a game?

4:11 PM

WSTKS-FM Worldwide said…

Thank you, Conrad! I'm hoping to stage a small solo affair in December once the college term winds down and there is a bit more free time. Keep your fingers crossed.

Best Regards,

Stokes

7:09 PM

Bluebear Jeff said…

I know that you've struggled with these finely-detailed figures . . . and the results are worth it.

But all-in-all I much prefer simpler castings. It is one of the reasons that I like the elegant RSM sculpts . . . they are not super-detailed . . . and we all know that if the detail is cast onto the figure we feel obligated to paint it.

Stokes, give yourself a simpler painting project for your next unit. Reward yourself for finishing the Hussars.

-- Jeff

5:25 AM

WSTKS-FM Worldwide said…

Thanks for the advice and encouragement, Jeff! You'll notice a regiment of bare metal RSM95 Prussian musketeers in the background of the photograph accompanying this post. Them's what's next in the painting queue, and I can't wait for the return to these old friends. Compared to the hussars, t will almost seem like they're painting themselves. Of that I'm certain.

Best Regards,

Stokes

10:36 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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