Shaking Off the Post-Holiday Lethargy. . .

A before photograph of the somewhat messy painting table here in Zum Stollenkeller.

Ok, no painting last night, so let the mockery and derision begin! However, as you know, it can be very hard to get anything accomplished when the painting table is in disarray. With that in mind, I did manage to clear a few things away that remained from the pre-Christmas wooden truck project. I next moved the Austrian/Saxon, Continental, and Grand Ducal family vignettes out of the way, so that I can concentrate my attention and efforts on the remaining English and Prussian general officer vignettes.

I remember writing somewhere in the last few years that, to keep the painting flames hot, it can be extremely helpful not to have tons of unpainted figures cluttering up the painting table. To my mind, it can be disheartening when you have a huge painting task fully visible before you. Why risk painter's block (a cousin of writer's block) after all? Far better to break a painting project down into more manageable bits, put some things to one side for a while, and tackle things in manageable stages. That's the theory at least.

So, maybe not quite so much mockery and derision from the virtual peanut gallery this morning? ;-) Let's see what transpires this evening.

An after photo once things were put away and neatened up. Ah. . . . Now let's get those painting fingers warmed up.

Comments

Brigadier Dundas said…

I can still see the unpaired waifs to your immediate left, put a cloth over them. Now your more than halfway done with those leaders on the table (smile).
Happy painting!
Don

5:45 PM

adeptgamer said…

What's the hammer for!? You gotta tell me how you use that in painting. I need to know that technique.

7:05 AM

Bloggerator said…

I need a good figure of de Latte. Something noble would suit.

9:24 PM

Prufrock said…

That's a nice orderly painting space you have there! Unfortunately, all my gear needs to be pulled out of a cupboard when I want to use it, and output suffers greatly as a result...

I also like those new bases you are doing. Excellent idea.

Cheers,
Aaron

1:19 AM

CelticCurmudgeon said…

i resent the "virtual peanut gallery" comment. I actually sat in the Peanut Gallery on the Howdy Doody Show back in the early fifties. BTW, very nice to hear you revving up your painting engines again.
Gerardus Magnus

3:44 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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