Classes are over here in the Grand Duchy of Stollen!

What the heck! Let's have a little more of Saint Nicholas today. No reason not to, you know.

Classes concluded for yours truly yesterday afternoon, and I have a few easy days before collecting final papers to read next week and determining final course grades for students in my three courses the last few months. The Grand Duchess arrived home from her final class meeting for the term a little while ago, and already a peaceful December calm has settled over the house. Ahhhhh. . .

The Young Master and I spent a delightful morning together today. Following breakfast, he returned to his room on the second floor (his decision) to play with his Matchbox cars and other assorted vehicles, while I had a second cup of coffee and wrote a bit in my sadly neglected journal at the dining table. We followed that by bundling up and going for a nice long walk together around the neighborhood. The day is perfect for early December. Chilly, gray, and damp. I love it, and the Young Master is particularly taken with minivans, ~~busses~~ buses (thanks, Jim!) and, dump trucks at the moment, so it was a win-win situation.

After we returned home, and before I fixed us lunch, I spent a bit of time paging through some uniforms books for several specific examples of Prussian generals and officers with regards to facing colors, lace, and the like. With the current crop of 20 RSM, Minden, and Fife & Drum figures, I aim to provide a visual feast for the eyes despite the preponderance of rich Prussian Blue.

Which brings me to my final point for the day. I spent a lovely couple of hours last night here in Zum Stollenkeller, applying thinned (with Original Liquin) flesh tone, Prussian Blue, Cadmium Red, and Sap Green Winsor-Newton alkyd oils to said figures. Still not much to look at, but they are getting there slowly but surely. "Poco a poco" as they say in Spanish. And best of all, that comforting aroma of oil paints still hangs in the air this afternoon. I've included a couple of progress photos below for your perusal.

Two photographs of the current project on the painting table for the December 24th Friendly Painting Challenge deadline: 20 general and staff figures by Fife & Drum, RSM95, and Minden Miniatures. Funny, but once you start, high quality castings almost seem to paint themselves!

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...

Basic Reds Done at Last. . .

S till quite a way to go with the current batch of 20 human figures and a horse (of course), but they're actually starting to look like something after all of the red distinctions. Quite a bit of painting in hour-long sessions the last week as and when time has allowed. Mostly applying the basic dark red to facing areas and turnbacks followed by the inevitable touch-ups to clean up wobbly edges and those misplaced, minute splotches of Citadel Khorne Red. They're looking like so many Austrian infantry regiments of the era at this point, but the eventual flags will turn them magically into the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment, more or less, of the AWI period. But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. One frustrating point (ahem) of sad discovery. I've started trying to use those Winsor & Newton 'Series Seven' brushes (#1 rounds) purchased last spring, and the blasted things simply will not keep a point. Very frustrating since I have heard over the y...

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

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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