The Grand Duke Has No Clothes. . .

Eureka's Voltaire, Frederick II and a pair of whippets, who will become Professor Detrius, Irwin-Amadeus II and. . . a pair of whippets, aka Max and Moritz, who will stand in for the Grand Duke's beloved Portugese Water Dogs.

A small package from Eureka Miniatures USA was waiting with the mail when I arrived home yesterday. If life is kind, I hope to get them onto temporary bases this afternoon and apply a coat or two of basecoat this evening. Still waiting on the packages from Minden (laborers) and Old Glory UK (18th century aristocrats by Jackdaw), which should be along any day now. Somehow, the old Fawlty Towers Theme keeps going through my head (be sure to click on the preceding link for the full-length tune, composed by Dennis Wilson), which must be one of the first indicators of oncoming and terminal madness.

And the musicians: a string quartet with Frederick II on flute and some weird cat named J.S. Bach on the clavichord. In the Grand Duchy of Stollen, all are destined to become a group of bumbling court musicians in crimson and green livery.

Comments

Daisy Gowan Ditchburn said…

nice figures. full of character too

2:42 PM

warpaintjj said…

I want court musicians in my house; musician envy maybe. Don't worry overly about the oncoming "madness" - roll with it - enjoy!
Looking forward to these being painted.
JJ

7:43 PM

Ross Mac rmacfa@gmail.com said…

Whippets? Whippets!! Freddie had Italian Greyhounds. If Eureka is selling them as Whippets I'll have to have a word with them.

Should all good when you get to it though.

8:25 PM

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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