Tarleton and Marion in The Road to Guilford. . .

Banastre Tarleton (left) and Francis Marion (right). Figures by Fife&Drum, painted mostly with Winsor & Newton Griffin alkyd oils, some details picked out with Citadel acrylics, and groundwork done with Woodland Scenics.

All good road movies need a duo of sorts. Sarandon and Davis, Gibson and Glover, Martin and Lewis, Hope and Crosby, Abbott and Costello. . . Tarleton and Marion. Just think of the films those two could have made!

Anyway, here they are, freshly glossed and terrained -- Banastre and Francis. Not hyper-detailed, but enough to make me happy, and, most important, they are done. They'll do fine at arm's length on the table. Tarleton will serve as an officer in the Army of Zichenau, and Marion in the Army of Stollen where his dark blue and red-faced coat will fit right in.

-- Stokes

Francis Marion, aka "The Swampfox" up close and personal. You see here how, if things work like they should, the pigment settles in the eye sockets, just below the nose in the philtrum area, and between the lips, obviating the need for shadows and highlighting.

And here is "Bloody Ban" Tarleton all by himself. I am pleased with the way the horsehair crest, sheepskin, and green feathers turned out. No touch-ups required. Sap Green (thinned considerably with Liquin Original) proved to be a nice, rich color for feathers, coat, and saddlecloth without being too dark. However, he suffers from a pronounced overbite if you look closely. Darn it! Should've resisted the urge to pick out his teeth with a breath of white paint on that 000 sable brush.

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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