I'll make some coffee, and let's have a few slices of Stollen!

Today's Victorian postcard image shows another green-robed Santa Claus/Father Christmas atop a small sleigh drawn by two rather more realistic reindeer. . . in size at any rate.

We took Young Master Paul to visit Santa Claus late this morning, and he did very well. Hopped right up in Santa's lap, babbled some toddler language for a few minutes, smiled, hopped down, and thanked Santa in English and then German before taking my hand and leading me away to his mother. All in all, it was a very pleasant exchange. And I must commend Santa on his genuine white beard and deep, resonant voice, which is what you would expect from the Big Man after all.

As for the next batch of ten RSM's. . . The fleshtone has been applied. And I am pleased with the way I am gradually learning to use the brush to wipe off excess paint on the raised areas of each face (cheeks, chin, and bridge of the noses), providing an instant highlight when using a white basecoat. After supper and Young Master Paul's bedtime, it's on to the various black parts of the figures -- hats, shoes/gaiters, and cartridge pouches. Charge!

And here you are. . . One half of the Grand Duchess Sonja's Dresdner Stollen for Christmas 2011, all finished at about 1:30 this morning. We store it in two plastic boxes, but truthfully it's never around long enough to worry about it going stale. In fact, I've already informed my wife that she might, just might need to prepare and bake another one next week to carry us through New Year's! Oh, and I think this stollen is the best one yet. A bit moister and with more dried fruit. It almost melts in your mouth. Shhhhh, don't mention the amount of butter that's in this to my doctor!

Comments

Mosstrooper said…

Mmmm! looks very nice indeed.

12:55 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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