Squiggles 'n' Blops on a Lazy Saturday. . .

The title of an over-sized Jackson Pollock study in color and texture? Noooooo! Just a description of the piece of palette paper on which I've been thinning and mixing my alkyd oil paints for a couple of evenings as I apply the colors to my Prussian and British officers and horses. The addition of London Yellow this morning -- to approximate the yellow of an officer of Prussia's 2nd Kuirassiere -- just seemed to pull everything together. It's funny the things that cross your mind as you paint. And as I thinned the blob of yellow with several drops of Original Liquin earlier today, it occurred to me that the mix of puddles of various colors had a pleasing effect. At least to my eyes. Hence the reason behind, and the title of, this post.

Now, lots of wargamers and figure painters state that they have always avoided using oils because of, among other things, the perception that it takes a long time for the paints to dry, preferring the convenience of acrylic hobby paints of one brand or another. Fair enough. Especially if you are using old-fashioned oils thinned with something like Linseed Oil, which can take weeks to dry out.

But, alkyd oil colors, like those produced by Winsor-Newton, dry to the touch overnight, and the Liquin thinner itself also speeds up drying times appreciably. Using the two together mean that it's safe to begin the next painting step on a batch of figures within 24 hours and sometimes even sooner. So, if you're after something slightly different with your miniatures painting, I urge you to give oils a try. They can produce some really nice effects applied over a white undercoat.

Comments

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

Search This Blog