Painting Experimentation. . .

Thanks to those of you who offered the benefit of your painting experience and suggestions via your comments on yesterday's posting. While finishing the final nine Minden hussars, I've allowed my mind to wander -- always a dangerous thing -- and think ahead a bit.

I've decided to conduct a painting experiment of sorts and returned a short while ago from my local arts and crafts supply store. My small purchase included a small bottle of Speedball super pigmented acrylic ink in Scarlet Red along with a tiny tube of Cotman watercolor pigment in Cadmium Red. I already had a tube of Winsor and Newton Griffin alkyd oil in Cadmium Red here in Zum Stollenkeller in my box of oil tubes.

So, onto the experiment. This evening after supper and Young Master Paul's bedtime, what I'll do is basecoat three of those RSM musketeers with Liquitex acrylic white paint (two coats). Tomorrow, once dry, I'll begin. One figure will get a wash of the watercolor, once will be treated with the acrylic ink, and the third will get a wash of the alkyd oil. I'll post a photo update here once I'm done for your perusal while I then think about which of the three treatments I'm most pleased with. As for the other colors applied to these Luebecker Musketeers, to the best of my ability, I'll try to use thin washes of acrylic color here too.

What I hope to emulate, ultimately, is that wonderful, Peter Gilder-like porcelain figure appearance. Big painting shoes to fill certainly, so we'll see how thing turn out together. My painting experimentation should be kind of interesting, at least from my vantage point. I've never varied all that much in how I go about painting my figures, save for changing to black basecoats about 25 years ago and the application of washes of brown oils over Humbrol undercoats for horses a year or so ago. So, here's to a figurative return to the (painting) experimentation* of one's youth!

*Before any of you Stollen regulars get any ideas, I was actually pretty tame in my youth despite the long hair and loud music and enjoyed a fairly stable, gentile upbringing. I learned much later on -- from good ol' Mom no less -- that my parents were actually pretty wild by comparision during their university days in the early and mid-60s, before settling down a bit once my sister and I arrived. I'll leave it to you to fill in the blanks. ;-)

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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