Evening #2: The Second 20 of 80 FIgures. . .

Still lots to do, but at least they are starting to look like small men. Sort of.

Two good painting sessions today, the second to last day of a rather long Christmas and Winter break from school. The first was actually this afternoon, as the Young Master played in the outer room of Zum Stollenkeller and periodically asked to come into my inner sanctum to see what ol' Dad was up to. The second, concluded a short while ago, about 9:15pm here.

Anyway, the brushwork completed today really just paves the way for the more interesting colors over the next couple of evenings, which will really help this batch of figures come alive. For now, painting was limited to fleshtone, gray undercoating of eventually black areas (ala Peter Gilder and Doug Mason), and the green figure bases. Next up, and in this order, I'll apply the following thinned Winsor&Newton Griffin alkyd oil colors:

1) Ivory Black to hats, shoes/gaiters, scabbards, and cartridge pouches
2) Yellow Ochre to breeches and waistcoats
3) Prussian Blue to coats
4) Cadmium Red (or maybe Scarlet Lake) to facings, turnbacks, and coat tails

Then, it will be onto small details like muskets, musket straps, gun barrels, etc., etc., etc. Mercifully, the mid-18th century RSM95 figures, while realistically proportioned and rather nice in most cases, do not have much in the way of extra pouches, bags, straps, buttons, and badges that require painting. Certainly, nothing like, say, most Napoleonic figures on the market in 2015. I figure the four numbered items above will take me two-four evenings if there are no 'real life' snags along the way before getting to the rather limited detailing. We'll see.

It is the final day of vacation tomorrow, and then I'm dropped back in the soup as of 9am Wednesday morning. Sad to see the break end, and at the same time rarin' to go. I always have mixed feelings about the end of vacations and lengthy breaks, but that's life I suppose.

-- 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

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 ...

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...

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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