General Pipeclay Higginbotham-Bulling and ADC. . .

Introducing General Pipeclay Higginbotham-Bulling (at left on the Chestnut horse) and his ADC Colonel Murgatroyd. Two of Jim Purkey's wonderful range of Fife & Drum Miniatures.

Here is how things stand this afternoon with two of my 20 pledged staff figures for the December 24th 'Friendly Painting Challenge' deadline that is looming ever closer. Still a number of touch-ups to take care of, followed by gloss varnish and then groundwork, but overall, I am reasonably pleased with the way these two are turning out.

Paintwork has been (surprise, surprise) mostly in alkyd oils thinned with Original Liquin while Citadel acrylic paints have been used for most, but not all, of the detailing. In particular, I have Winsor & Newton gold straight from the tube (NOT thinned) for the lace across the fronts and on the sleeves of the good General's and Colonel's coats as well as their epaulettes.

Very easy to put it exactly where you want it, and metallic oils tend to dry much more rapidly than other colors within the medium. Great fun using the oils too, and each painting session is also a learning experience as I work to improve (and maybe one day perfect) my brushwork. Well pleased with the afternoon's work in any case. Ok, now it's back to salt mine and that stack of student papers staring me in the face from where they sit on the right end of my desk.

Comments

James Brewerton said…

great looking command, never did enjoy working with oils on my wargames figures but have used them on a few Bust's and large scale stuff.
Peace James
Exiles Painting

5:19 PM

Bluebear Jeff said…

Very proper-looking officers indeed, sir. They shall undoubtedly acquit themselves well on the battlefield. They may or may not win . . . but they will do it with proper "Englishness".

-- Jeff

6:02 PM

joppy said…

Beautiful job. I'm extremely envious. That's why I tend to stick to the 18th century - not so much bullion!

5:25 AM

tidders2 said…

super looking command vignette

-- Allan

6:47 AM

Giles said…

Lovely work, Stokes. You've really made these figures come alive. I must get some!

Best wishes

Giles

5:36 PM

Old School ACW said…

The AWI British are the very peak of the 18th century look for me.

Lovely figures and excellent painting Stokes,

Greg

4:56 AM

Steve-the-Wargamer said…

Nice work, Stokes - but you still aren't going to persuade me away from pure acrylics! :o)

6:32 AM

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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