The elves are shifting operations into high gear in the Grand Duchy of Stollen!

This is, I think, my favorite image of Santa Claus/ Father Christmas this season due to the wonderful red-brown robes and the fact that he is on skis. Some of you Stollen regulars my recall, while I am by no means an expert Nordic/Cross-Country skier, and I have more than my share of face-plants each time we have been lucky enough to get out on skis, I am an enthusiastic participant. Now, if Mother Nature would just send about 6"+ of the white stuff to our neck of the American Midwest!

Things are clicking into high gear fairly smoothly here at Stollen Central this early afternoon. The Grand Duchess is off to have lunch with a friend from school and then to the supermarket to shop for Christmas Dinner. Meanwhile, yours truly has been busy folding and stowing clean laundry and ironing a few things to wear on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I am nothing if not a thoroughly domesticated male. Thank good ol' Mom, who once told me while demonstrating how to wash clothes and then iron them when I was about twelve, "Pay attention! Someday, your wife will appreciate this."

In a little while, Young Master Paul will have lunch and then a nap. Then, onto a little gift-wrapping, ordering a Christmas centerpiece for my sister and brother-in-law, and a couple of Amazon online certificates for Mom and Step-Dad. Oh, and I managed to get the two-part process on the red coats of the current batch of ten RSM95 musketeers early yesterday evening. Be sure to check back for a photo update later today! Tonight, it's onto the browns: musket stocks, hair, and mustaches.

A rather cheerful representation of the Big Man. The basket of fruit on his shoulder is a neat touch, and of course I'm a sucker for the purple robes and wreath of holly that adorn this particular Santa Claus/ Father Christmas.

Comments

Bluebear Jeff said…

Well, while I'm sure that it is nowhere nearly as good as that made by the Grand Duchess Sonja, one of our local bakeries had stollen for sale . . . so I got some and my wife and I both liked it.

-- Jeff

4:54 PM

tidders2 said…

Stokes

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

-- Allan

7:42 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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