No photos of the young George Michael and Andrew Ridgley here!

A rather plain version of good ol' Saint Nicholas, but the image is attractive in ay case.

Just a quick post this morning, so I can get to that last batch of student papers, submit final course grades for the semester, and then maybe some painting later on this afternoon or evening. Very close to finishing those first two officers, a drummer, NCO, and standard-bearer. Just some final touch-ups to address and then the standard itself, which should be really eye-catching if I can pull it off free-hand. Tune in tomorrow (evening) to see how things have gone.

At the top of today's entry, a nice representation of Santa Claus/Father Christmas albeit a bit on the plain side by modern standards. Still, he cuts a dashing, if slightly subdued, figure. His colors nevertheless have a certain something that appeals to my eye. Hmmmm, brown and red (or is it crimson?) with brown fur trim might be attractive colors for a future hussar regiment, or maybe a company of Croats.

Oh, and the title of today's post refers to that old Wham! tune that has become a Christmas staple on the radio this time of year. Of course, I'm referring to Last Christmas, a tune that first made the charts in December of 1984. I actually enjoy hearing the original version of the song, however you can have the covers that have been issued more recently by country star Taylor Swift, the cast of the American TV program Glee, et al. Puh-leeze!

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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