Pontonier Update #6: The Pontoons. . .

A leisurely stroll with the paintbrush today, finishing the two pontoons manned by my David Soul look-alike in 1/56 scale and his three companions.

One of those truly delightful (and all too rare) totally relaxed Saturday afternoons here today. A dark, chilly winter's day outside, a quiet and yet festive atmosphere inside. The Grand Duchess and I submitted our final grades yesterday afternoon and are now well and truly finished with school work and students until after the first of the year. We sent out the last of our Christmas cards this morning, the house is decorated, and the shopping finished. Whew!

The Young Master, while suffering from a small cold, is currently ensconced on the loveseat in the TV room watching episodes of Daniel Tiger online, and yours truly has enjoyed an extremely pleasant few hours down here in Zum Stollenkeller with the cats today, listening to Christmas Jazz as well as traditional English Christmas carols online. The Christmas Festival can come along any time now.

And here is a photograph of the now finished pontoons, commanded by David Soul's great, great, great, great, great grand something-or-other at right. The outside of the pontoons have three coats of Citadel copper while the insides were coated first in a dark red and then boards were carefully picked out with a brighter red. I've tried to made the figure bases fairly inconspicuous. Ok, let the glossing of the 24 pontoniers, four oarsmen, and two spare pontoons begin!

Life has its stresses and frustrations, yes, but at this moment, I feel more relaxed, happy, and extremely fortunate than I have felt since, well, last summer before the fall term began. Clearly, the key is having enough time to slow down, reflect quietly, and, as a result, be able to hear oneself think. Know what I mean?

-- Stokes

Another vintage Swedish Christmas greeting today, depicting Tomte, the Swedish cousin of the Norwegian Julenissen, lighting the candles on a snow-covered Fir or Spruce.

P.S.
As far as rules for the use of pontoniers on the tabletop and bridge construction, I'll dig around and see what Charles S. Grant suggests. I'll also see what he has suggested in various books and Table Top Teasers from the past as far as scenarios are concerned. It will be nice to wrap these figures up and move onto something else. I realize that I've spent all of 2014, where rare and precious free time has been available, assembling and painting the now rather large generic mid-18th century pontoon and supply train. Great fun and a welcomed change of pace, but it's time to get back to some officer vignettes and the fighting end of things. Finally, the officer in charge of the pontoniers will be an Englishman, General Cadfael Huffington-Blather, on loan to Stollen from the Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg, a.k.a. Hanover. To represent him and his to subordinate officers, I will paint up the Duke of Cumberland figure et al sold by Crann Tara Miniatures.

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