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

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...

Warboss Green Bases. . .

I t's amazing how something as simple as applying two coats of Citadel 'Warboss Green' (ex-Games Workshop 'Goblin Green') can enliven a unit of figures and get 'em that much closer to glossing and completion. In much the same way that applying fleshtone early in painting process helps bring the figures to life. Just some limited dry-brushing to bring out the manes, tails, and some equine musculature, and I'm calling my version of Saxony's von Polenz Cuirassiers, circa 1733, done and dusted. Longtime visitors to the Grand Duchy of Stollen might recall (the blog will turn 19 years old in September) that I generally go for an old school approach when it comes to unit bases and paint them a nice, bright green. Exceptions include command vignettes, skirmishers of one kind or another, transport, camp followers, and various other civilian one-offs. The approach is not to everyone's taste, but I like the cheery toy soldier appearance once everything...

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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