2015 Starts with a Bang. . .

The current batch of figures underway.

Managed to snatch about two hours yesterday evening -- New Year's Eve here -- for some early painting of the first 23 figures of the monster composite regiment. When you have a small child, and your usual babysitters (female students) are away for Christmas Break, it's difficult to make plans. However, the Grand Duchess and I opened a bottle of sparkling wine just before Midnight and drank most of it before hitting the hay an hour later. Funny. I can vividly recall staying out all night a few times during the first half of my 20s when it came to New Year's Eve celebrations.

The wonderful old Knoetel illustration (the Kurmainz grenadier at far left) on which I'm basing the RSM95 Austrian grenadiers above at far left.

Anyway, the figures currently under the brush above will be painted, more or less, as grenadiers from Kurmainz by the way, so white coats, straw breeches, green facings, turnbacks, and waistcoats with black bearskins that have green bags. I've opted to use the usual Sap Green from the Winsor & Newton Griffin Alkyd Oil range since it is a very pleasant, somewhat muted green once thinned with Liquin Original.

The most exciting painting last night involved applying a thin wash of green latex paint -- the same color used for my tabletop actually -- to the figure bases. The gray undercoats on the shoes/gaiters, bearskins/hats, and cartridge pouches went so easily, that I decided to go on to the bases before calling it a night here in Zum Stollenkeller at 10pm.

This evening after supper and the Young Master's bedtime, it will be onto applying thinned alkyd oil fleshtone to faces and hands and a wash of thinned Alkyd oil Ivory Black over the gray items painted last night. And maybe either an acrylic tan undercoat to the coats. . . or thinned alkyd oil Yellow Ochre to the breeches. The latter makes a nice tan-straw color over a white basecoat when thinned enough with the Liquin. If things go rapidly, I might even attempt to do both. We'll see.

Yes, indeed. Right now at least, it seems 2015 is off to a promising start. Happy New Year everyone!

-- Stokes

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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