Command Vignettes Phase II. . .

More Minden Prussians, Austrians, Fife & Drum, and RSM95 officers along with a couple of large French 4pdrs also by Fife & Drum.

Alrighty then. Time to overcome the summertime, post-vacation lethargy and get my you-know-what back to the painting desk this evening for two hours, following supper and the Young Master's bedtime. On tap for the planned painting session, a basecoat of white artists' acrylic gesso for the Fife & Drum cannon in the forefront and a start on detailing the Prussian cuirassier and dragoon officers at the far left of the photograph.

Once these have been completed, during the next several days I hope, I'll begin working methodically through the vignettes of Prussian and AWI officers in the middle row before moving on to the Austrians and blacksmith vignette in the rear row. I've decided to paint at least some of the Austrians as Polish-Saxon officers in red or crimson, you know, just to keep things interesting and moving forward. This should take me well into August and the start of yet another academic year. Sigh.

The two out-of-focus packets that you might notice to the left of the bottles and tines of paints in the far rear of today's picture contain Minden laborers and French artillery crew, all of whom are destined to be painted as a large company of generic sappers/miners/pontooniers, augmented with a few civilians, who will serve either the Stollenian, or Zichenauer army as necessary. These are the planned project for September and October, once things have calmed down a few weeks into autumn semester. By that time, I will hopefully have begged and cajoled some of the new Fife & Drum powder and pontoon wagons, along with horse teams and drivers, from my wife, the Grand Duchess, for the approaching 29th birthday ;-), which should take us into the Christmas and New Year's period, barring any unforeseen developments.

Then, it might be time to add another large unit of infantry of cavalry, currently gathering dust in the pile of lead and plastic here in Zum Stollenkeller. I'm also keeping a close and careful eye on the planned development of those Hessians by Fife & Drum. If they resemble SYW Prussians closely enough once greens have been made and some preliminary photographs appear, I know where future regiments of infantry will be recruited. In the meantime, I've got enough unpainted RSM95 Prussians hanging around for two 60-figure regiments of infantry. These require painting in the next year or so.

And finally, there is a solo game to plan and play through during the two weeks in early August when the Grand Duchess and Young Master journey westward for two weeks to visit the other set of grandparents, leaving yours truly to my own devices for a glorious 13 days or so of unstructured, personal time for reading, painting, movie viewing, and listening to the radio. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Enough palaver. . . To the brushes comrades!

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

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 ...

The Eventual Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment. . .

The Anhalt-Zerbst regiment musters in the drill square to sort themselves into platoons and companies during the coming weeks Fall maneuvers if you will. A large dose of real life the last few days with the start of classes next Monday, various preparatory meetings, and finishing up a few other things this week. But, I managed to sort out 60 or so Minden Austrian infantry from the pile and get 'em stuck to temporary painting bases. Must carefully drill out the hands of several NCOs for flagpoles and pole arms this weekend before the usual basecoat. I'm thinking of mixing the usual white gesso with the usual light gray to kill two birds with one stone so to speak. Applying both base- and undercoat in one fell swoop as my grandmother used to say. In the meantime, the recently finished squadron of Saxon cuirassiers has been placed carefully in one of the clear acrylic boxes on my shelves until I have the suitable flag to affix. -- Sto...

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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