A Veritable Fleet of Trucks!

The newly completed trucks just waiting for their coat of shiny varnish later tonight.

Here they are, all done except for a shiny coat of acrylic varnish. From left to right: a city garbage truck, a Federal Express truck, a UPS (United Parcel Services) truck, and a United States Postal Services truck. Paul calls the latter a 'Leslie' since that is the name of our local mail lady.

Normally, we teach him to call all adults either Mr., Mrs./Ms., or whatever professional title might be appropriate, but we are actually friendly with our mail carrier and began introducing Paul to her before we knew her last name. So, she remains Leslie to him.   Whenever we are out together in the car, or on foot, and the Young Master spots a small mail van, he calls out, "There is a Leslie!"

For those who might be interested, the trucks measure approximately 33/4" long x 2" high x 11/2" across. I used blocks of wood plus wooden wheels, tiny metal screws, and washers plus various tubes of acrylic paint by Liquitex. I wish I could add a convincing blue eagle to each side of the US Mail van in the right foreground, but my painting hand is not good with large birds. It's a foul state of affairs, but there you are. I suspect that the Young Master will not mind at this point in his life however.

And it seems that this year is shaping up to be the Christmas of wheeled vehicles. He'll be getting all kinds of cars, trucks, and heavy equipment from various family members and Santa Claus. Christmas Day should be loads of fun for him. The vastly increased level of awareness and excitement the Paul displays multiple times daily this Christmas season about seeing the trees and the Swedish star in the front window are truly a joy to behold.

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 ...

The Eventual Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment. . .

The Anhalt-Zerbst regiment musters in the drill square to sort themselves into platoons and companies during the coming weeks Fall maneuvers if you will. A large dose of real life the last few days with the start of classes next Monday, various preparatory meetings, and finishing up a few other things this week. But, I managed to sort out 60 or so Minden Austrian infantry from the pile and get 'em stuck to temporary painting bases. Must carefully drill out the hands of several NCOs for flagpoles and pole arms this weekend before the usual basecoat. I'm thinking of mixing the usual white gesso with the usual light gray to kill two birds with one stone so to speak. Applying both base- and undercoat in one fell swoop as my grandmother used to say. In the meantime, the recently finished squadron of Saxon cuirassiers has been placed carefully in one of the clear acrylic boxes on my shelves until I have the suitable flag to affix. -- Sto...

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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