Der Stollen ist da! / We've got Stollen!

Here's the finished product with a fresh pot of coffee all ready to go.

The Grand Duchess, despite a small cold, whipped up a stollen for us late this afternoon, and the Young Master helped her for the first time. So, I think this year's stollen will taste extra specially good this year.

Longtime visitors to the Grand Duchy of Stollen blog might recall that the name for this ongoing project came to me in mid-December 2005 one afternoon in our old apartment a few blocks away from the current Stollen Central. The semester was over, final grades had been submitted, and there was finally time for daydreaming and note-making for a then as yet unamed fictitious mid-18th century campaign in the tradition of The War Game and Charge!

I mulled over everything at my desk as the Grand Duchess baked our very first stollen right across the hall in the kitchen, wondering what I might call the project. Suddenly, it hit me. The Grand Duchy of Stollen. . . Yes, that's it! And here we are. Eight years and close to 1000 25-30mm painted figures later. Christmas can come along now. We've got stollen in the kitchen, and I feel ready for anything.

A few minutes before, the Young Master and Grand Duchess applied melted butter before dusting heavily with Vanilla Sugar.

And finally, the Young Master and Grand Duchess applied the heavy dusting of the Vanilla Sugar.

Comments

marinergrim said…

A very warm and Merry Christmas to you sir. My wife makes fruit loaf and walnut bread just before the big day. It's never Christmas until then.

8:33 AM

Fitz-Badger said…

Always sounds yummy.

7:04 PM

Mad Padre said…

Mmmm, stollen. Madame Padre and I cheated and purchased a stollen from a Euro deli store here in town. I'm sure the Duchess' will be much finer.
A very happy Christmas to all in the Duchy from Canada.
Michael

11:17 AM

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 ...

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...

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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