Another New Look for the GD of S Blog. . .

Do children even send letters (or perhaps text messages by now) to Santa Claus and Father Christmas anymore? Or have we done our cynical best as a society to ruin that for them?

Well, I don't know about you, but I was not happy with yesterday's failed experiment with a more dynamic appearance for the Grand Duchy of Stollen blog, which also made blog administrations behind the scenes more difficult that necessary. So, back to the drawing board! However, on the suggestion of one commentator, I have found a nice image of 18th century damask wallpaper that I have set as the background of the blog. For the time being, we'll leave things as they are. I'm not 100% pleased with the blog's appearance, but I lack the time and inclination to get into learning HTML, which might permit easier manipulation/customization of things here.

No painting last night as I was simply too wiped out by evening to contemplate picking up a brush. I woke at 4am yesterday morning due to some noise on the street or something and was unable to fall back to sleep. Finally, I gave finally gave up the ghost a little over an hour later and rose just after 5am, operating yesterday on only about 4 hours of sleep. Sigh. Afternoon naps, sadly, are out of the question right now since we cannot get the Young Master to be quiet enough for Dad to remain asleep longer than 10 minutes or so. Oh, he has his afternoon quiet time, actual naps being relegated to the past at this point, but the concept of quiet reading, coloring, or contemplation for 2-3 hours in the late afternoons sometimes continues to elude him at only three+ years of age.

Anyway, I'd better get to that final stack of student papers in my briefcase now, so I can get that wrapped up and off my mind for a few weeks. After The Indras' final gig tonight, it's time for some pre-Christmas activities, a social occasion or two, final shopping errands next week, and some serious painting in the evenings. And then there is Neu Sittangbad to lay out and resume once again, General de Latte willing and permitting. A busy time indeed!

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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