Saturdays are (or should be) for painting. . .

The 2010 Weihnachtsmarkt in Greifswald, Germany (photo taken by Johannes Koepke). Maybe one day, we'll be in Germany for the Christmas season? Until then, I'll enjoy images like this one.

A late night last night. My amateur rock & roll band The Indras played a date at a nearby town, and it was after 1 o'clock by the time I returned home and unloaded the car. The Grand Duchess and Young Master Paul went somewhere this morning, so I have been able to sleep late -- a real treat these days -- and I am now having coffee at the computer and listening to some seasonal music online.

While there is still some stuff to do relating to the recently concluded college semester, and a small translation I really should start on, today I plan to paint, paint, paint. "Finish the current four Luebecker musketeers and make considerable inroads with the next batch of four" is the mantra for the afternoon and evening. Oh, and somewhere in there, I need to run an errand, to assist Sankt Nikolas, who will be leaving a few small edible treats for the Grand Duchess and Young Master Paul in their shoes on the night of December 5th. But then, it's back to the painting table!

Comments

Steve-the-Wargamer said…

Meant to ask - how's the book coming on..??

12:04 PM

WSTKS-FM Worldwide said…

Sigh. I shelved that project some time ago when it became apparent that I wouldn't be able to produce/publish anything as nice as Charles Grant's recent titles. Very disappointing, but sometimes you have to bite your tongue and know when to walk away from a project.

Best Regards,

Stokes

1:25 PM

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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