Time for some Austrians, er, um, Zichenauers. . .

A generic Austrian mounted officer converses with his Hungarian counterpart while a stray Croat takes pot shots at the enemy from behind the relative safety of a broken down gun carriage.

Painting on, and the glossing of, this latest command vignette was concluded late this morning with scenic features added mid-afternoon. This time, most of the painting was done with Citadel acrylics although the horses, hats, and footwear were done with thinned oils. The scenic features, as usual, are a combination of Woodland Scenics over sand stained dark brown, which was gathered many years ago from my maternal grandmother's creek bed during a dry spell in the summer of 1984. The boulder and a piece of rotting tree trunk come from my driveway just outside Stollen Central.

This time, instead of black lining the reins and harnesses on the horses, I first used a watery dark brown paint, followed by a reddish brown highlight (?!) over top. Dark brown lining gives a less stark effect than black, but still makes these particular details stand out against the lighter colored horses. I later added a tiny bit of the same dark brown lining to the three white uniforms just to define things a bit more. For anyone else loony enough to add old school lining to their figures, I'd suggest either a darker compliment of the same color or dark brown, both of which are a bit more subtle than black lining. But, to each his, or her own of course.

Rats! I just noticed that forgot to paint the Austrian's sword loop around his right wrist. Don't you just hate when that happens? Well, I suppose it's a fairly easy and rapid job to take care of it before continuing on with the next Austrian/Zichenauer staff vignette tonight or tomorrow. That particular base will feature some engineer officers mounted and on foot, overseeing some project or other. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The inspiration for the base of figures featured in today's post comes from a 15mm French Napoleonic staff vignette that was featured in the August '89 issue of Wargames Illustrated entitled 'Designing and Painting Napoleonic Armies' by an American named F. Patrick Burk. Sadly, despite my repeated web searches over the last few years for clues as to his whereabouts and hobby activities now, Mr. Burk seems to have disappeared without a trace in the intervening almost quarter century. Yikes! Where has the time gone?

The mounted figures are by Minden Miniatures while the gun and the lone Croat are by RSM95. Figures from these two ranges complement each other perfectly with regard to size and proportion and thus extend both ranges considerably where poses and/or battlefield activities are concerned.

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...

Warboss Green Bases. . .

I t's amazing how something as simple as applying two coats of Citadel 'Warboss Green' (ex-Games Workshop 'Goblin Green') can enliven a unit of figures and get 'em that much closer to glossing and completion. In much the same way that applying fleshtone early in painting process helps bring the figures to life. Just some limited dry-brushing to bring out the manes, tails, and some equine musculature, and I'm calling my version of Saxony's von Polenz Cuirassiers, circa 1733, done and dusted. Longtime visitors to the Grand Duchy of Stollen might recall (the blog will turn 19 years old in September) that I generally go for an old school approach when it comes to unit bases and paint them a nice, bright green. Exceptions include command vignettes, skirmishers of one kind or another, transport, camp followers, and various other civilian one-offs. The approach is not to everyone's taste, but I like the cheery toy soldier appearance once everything...

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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