Splash! Gulp, cough, sputter. . .

When I was about eight years old, through most of 1975, I had a music teacher in elementary school, one Mrs. Kaiser. She was, even then, a lady of a certain advanced age, who actually taught my class how to dance The Minuet (depicted above). We absolutely hated it at the time, of course, at least the boys in the class did. Or they pretended to. But I wish I could remember the dance now simply as a curiosity piece. My wife the Grand Duchess, however, might suggest that I am already eccentric enough without adding that to the mix!

Just a brief post to apologize to my long suffering and very patient opponent, General de Latte, for my disappearance these last couple of months. Real life has me swamped. Ok, drowning in various details, duties, and commitments that are the complicated minuet making up my life recently. Sadly, wargaming and related hobby activities have fallen through the cracks. Besides family life, with all of the highs and lows that entails, I am teaching another May Term film course -- which meets daily for four weeks, three hours at a time -- and developing another (rush delivery) for administrative approval, to be taught in the fall. Well, starting in August, really. Geeze, Louise! Summer vacation hasn't even started yet.

Then, there have been various writing projects on the table in different stages of completion, something that goes with the territory. You work a little here, revise a little there, delete quite a bit there, etc., etc. On a hobby-related note though, my article "Simplify Your Painting! 24 Tips to Help You Paint and Complete Tabletop Armies Faster and More Easily" appeared recently in Battlegames #29. Shameless self-promotion, yes, but I'm reasonably pleased with the piece which, for some odd reason, took quite a while to come together before I could submit it for consideration. Hopefully, it will be received well and might even help a few wargamers out there with their own painting.

Ok, it's on to my morning class planning now. Sigh. But the good General de Latte and I should be able to resume the Battle for Neu Sittangbad before too much more time has elapsed. And I see that the Grand Duchy of Stollen blog is only a few posts away from the 1000th post, which should warrant some kind of small celebration or exhibition here in some form or other. Watch for that in the coming days and weeks.

-- Von Tschatschke

It's Early Days Yet. . .

M aking some early progress with Batch A of the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment over the last several days/evenings. Nothing terribly exciting just yet, but the basic black, brown, and flesh areas are done as are the green bases, and gray undercoat. The latter two areas needed some careful retouching early in the week. Next up, the neck stocks. I might just do these in red for the enlisted men although some of my source material suggest they were black, but I always look for an excuse to shake things up a bit. Any errant splotches of red (or black) can be covered with another application of light gray before I move onto the next step. "Giddy up!" as one Cosmo Kramer might have said. -- Stokes

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 ...

A Little More Brushwork. . .

A little more brushwork on the first batch of (my version of) the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment yesterday (Saturday). Taking a different tack this time and addressing many of the details first before the white coats and other larger areas of uniform. The eagle-eyed among you will notice that I've painted the (dark) red stocks of the enlisted men. Always a difficult and frustrating item to paint, it made sense to paint from the inside out as it were and get that particular detail out of the way first rather than try to paint it in later after much other painting has been accomplished. Trying to reduce the need for later retouching of other items on the figures you understand. Hopefully, I will be able to get back to these later today after a second trip back to the Apple Store for help with a couple of new iPad issues and, following the return home, some revision of Google Slides for tomorrow's meetings with my students. -- Stokes P.S. And according t...

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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