Pontoniers Ready for Glossing and von Bauchschmerzen Underway. . .

Here they are, touch-ups done, green bases hit with a third coat of Goblin Green, and all ready for two coats of glossy acrylic gloss varnish. The perpetually stomach achy General von Bachschmwerzen has come to the fore, and his two-uhlan escort at the far left of the photo await basecoating.

A slight cold has taken hold here at Casa de Stollen, dash it all, but we're soldiering on toward Christmas anyway.

Tonight after supper and the Young Master's bedtime, I must, must, must wrap a few gifts, so I don't know that I'll have any time to return to the painting table. Hopefully, though, I will have some time tomorrow and on Christmas Eve to do the glossing and perhaps paint the two horses drawing von Bauchschmerzen's carriage.

Heavy dry brushing the latter with some muted yellow and light gray might be in order too, but we'll have to play that by ear. Family time is really more important over the next few days as I'm sure many of you will agree. Be sure to tune in again over the next couple of days for another update and a special Grand Duchy of Stollen Christmas greeting.

-- Stokes

And here is yet again one more vintage Swedish Christmas greeting. I really like the quiet, understated nature of these various Scandinavian cards I've shared here the last several days. Somehow they seem more in keeping with what the season ought to be about rather than the overblown, overwrought, LED illuminated months long spending-fest it has been turned into thanks to mass media, commercial marketing campaigns, and runaway materialism on the part of consumers.

Comments

Conrad Kinch said…

Merry Christmas old chap. Wishing you and yours all the very best.

3:03 AM

The Good Soldier Svjek said…

A Merry Christmas to you and yours , Tony

5:13 AM

Peter Douglas said…

MerryChristmas Stokes and family

Cheers
pD

8:06 AM

It's Early Days Yet. . .

M aking some early progress with Batch A of the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment over the last several days/evenings. Nothing terribly exciting just yet, but the basic black, brown, and flesh areas are done as are the green bases, and gray undercoat. The latter two areas needed some careful retouching early in the week. Next up, the neck stocks. I might just do these in red for the enlisted men although some of my source material suggest they were black, but I always look for an excuse to shake things up a bit. Any errant splotches of red (or black) can be covered with another application of light gray before I move onto the next step. "Giddy up!" as one Cosmo Kramer might have said. -- Stokes

A Little More Brushwork. . .

A little more brushwork on the first batch of (my version of) the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment yesterday (Saturday). Taking a different tack this time and addressing many of the details first before the white coats and other larger areas of uniform. The eagle-eyed among you will notice that I've painted the (dark) red stocks of the enlisted men. Always a difficult and frustrating item to paint, it made sense to paint from the inside out as it were and get that particular detail out of the way first rather than try to paint it in later after much other painting has been accomplished. Trying to reduce the need for later retouching of other items on the figures you understand. Hopefully, I will be able to get back to these later today after a second trip back to the Apple Store for help with a couple of new iPad issues and, following the return home, some revision of Google Slides for tomorrow's meetings with my students. -- Stokes P.S. And according t...

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 ...

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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