A Little Post-Holiday Lethargy. . .

If it's good enough for the Grand Duke Irwin-Amadeus II. . . Lately, the Saxon-Polish army of the 18th century has been on my mind.

Sigh. I was just saying to the Grand Duchess, in the kitchen upstairs as I waited for the coffee to brew, that I would fold a basket of the Young Master's clean clothing this afternoon. Keep in mind, the basket of said garments has been living in a corner of our bedroom for the last five days or so. But as I explained -- ok, rationalized -- by the time it's 8:30 or so in the evening, and the Young Master has gone to bed, who in the heck wants to tackle folding a basket of laundry??!! Far better to have a second mug of coffee and, mentally speaking, put up one's feet.

Similarly, I have been wrestling with a touch of painting lethargy since just before Christmas when I finished those four hand-made trucks for the Young Master. Oh sure. The desire to sit myself down and paint for an hour or two most evenings is there, but somehow between the late afternoon, supper, coffee, and now syllabus preparation for the coming academic term, which begins on Wednesday the 9th, the will to open a bottle or tube of color and pick up a paintbrush evaporates. And I simply want to lie down with a book and the Voice of Russia on the computer. I used to be an avid listener to shortwave radio, but that seems to be fading as more and more broadcasters have their funding cut and are forced to leave the shortwave bands.

Anyway, Christmas, the New Year, and Epiphany have come and gone now. The syllabi are done and off to the printing office. No related reading to do yet. Or (cringe) undergrad papers to read through. No more excuses. So, tonight, come hell or high water, I'm going to get my seat into the chair at the painting table for 90 minutes or two hours and work on some of those Minden, RSM, and Fife & Drum officers. And I will post a photo or two of my progress here tomorrow. As an added incentive, I give you, loyal readers, permission to jeer, sneer, catcall, mock, deride, and harangue yours truly if I fail to do so. Just keep it clean, please. The Grand Duchy of Stollen is a family place after all. ;-)

Comments

Bluebear Jeff said…

"Mock, Deride, and Harangue" . . . sounds like a legal firm, doesn't it?

-- Jeff

11:31 AM

WSTKS-FM Worldwide said…

That it does, Jeff! That it does. Kind of like the legal firm of Dewey, Cheatham, and Howe.

Best Regards,

Stokes

1:56 PM

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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