I'm not sure whether to say "Yeehaw!" or "Whew!"

More to follow over the next few days in the way of photographs, an updated progress chart, and the like. But suffice to say, the 61-figure strong 6th (Princess Nene's Luebecker Musketiers) Infantry Regiment, which joins the Army of Stollen, is now FINISHED. I made a huge push before supper this evening to wrap up painting on the last two company drummers and the mounted Colonel von Weinshenk, who have taken their place with the rest of the regiment to await their two coats of clear, glossy protective coating in the next few days and, afterwards, their marching orders.

What a wild ride the past few months have been due to not just one, but TWO painting challenges (Thanks Bill!). Since I did not quite manage to finish those Minden hussars until after the November 5th, 2011 deadline of the first challenge, I was bound and determined to to wrap up this latest unit of RSM95 musketeers before the deadline of the second challenge, January 16th, 2012. Come hell or high water you might say! I think I'll take a break now from anymore painting for a few weeks though. However, there are some RSM95 grenzers due here any day now from the Dayton Painting Consortium, and I'm supplementing those with a few more, plus some mounted Prussian and Austrian generals, from Minden Miniatures in Britain. Note to self: e-mail order to Frank Hammond in A.M.

The basic Sittangbad-sized forces that I set out to paint in August of 2006 are now COMPLETE! Whatever will I do with myself now? Hmmm. . .

On to the next phase of the project. . . A battalion of pandours? A battery of artillery? A regiment of plastic Spencer Smith charging cavalry? A regiment of RSM hussars converted into uhlans? A largely scratch-built wagon train? Oh, my head hurts. . . but in a good way!

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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