Lightbox Photos of the Last Six Carts, Wagons, and Teams. . .

No doubt, the huge casks carried by this wagon contain some sort of cheap rot-gut, which the soldiers of Stollen and Zichenau will nevertheless enjoy during the approaching Christmas Festival.

The first of two wagons that carry loads of lumber used by the pontoon train.

This French Napoleonic caisson was generously donated by our very own Master Conrad Kinch late last summer. Thank you again, Conrad! It fits in well with everything else. I didn't bother staining the sand with my usual wash of acrylic Raw Umber, and you don't really notice much of a difference, so I might just dispense with that particular step in future where command bases, vignettes, or future wagon/cart additions are concerned.

This horse cart carries a payload of items cobbled together from various bits and pieces -- two large barrels of coal, two small casks, three different chests, and a large sack of flour -- added during the last ten days or so, once painting, glossing, and basing were completed.

You can't assemble and paint up an 18th century supply train without including at least one oxcart, can you?

And finally, here is the second lumber/bridging timber wagon. The various wagons, carts, teams, and drivers/drovers shown here come from a number of different 25-30mm (or, indeed also 1/56th) manufacturers, ranges, and periods (in the case of the lumber wagons which are for the American Civil War). . . but I think they all work together rather nicely.

Next up in the painting queue? Glad you asked, Mr. Kinch! 26 or so Minden pontooniers, including a couple of extra pontoons which are being punted into position by four of the gentlemen in question. If the painting muse and Father Time are kind to me, I might be able to basecoat these tomorrow evening following the Young Master's bedtime. Onwards, and upwards!

By the way, and if interested, you can review the second batch of wagons by clicking here, and revisit the first batch completed last summer by clicking here. No more vehicles, horse-drawn or otherwise, for a while. . . barring Colonel von Bauchschmerzen's (Maurice de Saxe's) wicker carriage of course!

-- Stokes

P.S.
Tomorrow is December 1st although today is the first Sunday in Advent according to the calendar. To those of you who observe, Happy Advent Season!

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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