Presenting the Finished Sutleress Vignette. . .

Submitted for your approval, the now finished Suren sutleress vignette.

Here it is. A wee bit too grassy (I wish a bit more sand showed through the grass scatter material), but let's just say these enterprising ladies have chosen a sunny, grassy area some distance from the main road to set up shop in sight of any troops marching by.

I won't be doing anymore non-combatant scenes for a while, but the next such tableaux on the long-term mental list will be either a group of soliders' wives (Suren/Willie figures) doing the laundry around a big, boiling cauldron. . . or a Lutheran pastor (Black Hussar Miniatures) attempting to save a group of fallen women (more Suren/Willie figures) overseen by their madam, who I have christened the Naughty Lola.

Relax, guys! No nudie figures to see here, just more of these delightfully weird and characterful female figures culled from the various 30mm Suren/Willie ranges currently in production. All I can say is that the late Ted Suren clearly must have had unresolved issues with the women in his life.

In the meantime, the two dozen or so Minden Miniatures castings on clear view in many recent photos will become two companies of pontooniers in the next few weeks. Hopefully before Christmas. There might be another vignette or two of mounted officers in there as well if the elusive painting muse stays with me. And then, that long-delayed regiment of 80 RSM95 infantry, whose four companies are destined to wear four different uniforms based on the three contingents of the Ernestine Sachsen infantry and the grenadiers of Poland's Crown Guard Grenadier regiment. A busy couple of months ahead, painting-wise.

-- Stokes

Comments

Phil said…

What a beautiful job, I like it so much, glad to see this inspired work!

2:14 AM

tidders said…

Great little vignette, just the right place to get a yummy snack

5:56 AM

Peter Douglas said…

Lovely group Stokes!

I'll have a mug of cheap brandy or rough cider please!
Cheers

PD

9:55 AM

Springinsfeld said…

What a great little scene. Well done.

3:27 PM

WSTKS-FM Worldwide said…

Thank you, men! This was a fun diversion envisioning, assembling, and painting the diverse pieces that make up the scene. Every set-up, regardless of the period, needs some camp followers!

Best Regards,

Stokes

11:16 AM

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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