Suren Suttleresses in Progress. . .

The three ladies in question, currently under the brush.

All of the various bits and pieces of my pontoon and supply train have been finished except for the remaining groundwork for that red caisson and it's four-horse team. Watch for some Kodak moments here in the coming days.

Otherwise I'm taking a small diversion during the long Thanksgiving Weekend and painting up a few of those Willie (Suren) female figures ordered last spring, along with a small supply and provisions tent and table -- plus various bits of sustenance and a few trunks, crates, and barrels -- before moving onto the Minden pontooniers in the background and then that 80-figure composite regiment of RSM95 infantry, which will be painted up as a unit of Ernestine Sachsen infantry and a conjectured battle flag.

Anyway, I am basing the colors of the attire worn by the three suttleresses above on the following painting of Frederick II exchanging some sore of interaction with, presumably, Prussian peasants.

So far, so good. The painting on the one test figure in the middle went quickly, and the Willie figures really lend themselves to painting with thin washes and stains. Lots of deep folds for the runny pigments to settle into I might even be able to wrap up the other two gals this evening after supper and the Young Master's bedtime. Tune in again tomorrow for an update.

-- Stokes

Frederick II talks to potato growers, the painting I am using as a guide for the colors of the suttleresses shown above. I can just imagine ol' Fritz speaking to the farmers and field hands in some variety of Low German, since I believe I have read somewhere that he detested the German language in general and preferred French. Perhaps, I'm wrong.

Comments

Unknown said…

I think they'll look tremendous when finished and old master pieces are such a good idea for inspiration. I do the same for ADCs.

Simon

4:40 PM

Mad Padre said…

That must have been an awkward conversation.
"And that, is that a potato?"
"Yes, sire."
"And they grow like that, just on the ground?"
"Yes, sire, pretty much."
"Amazing And how long have you been a potato farmer?"
"All my life, sire"
"Ah. You must enjoy the work, then."

Those three ladies look very ... buxom. Nice figures.

12:17 PM

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

Search This Blog