Christmas Wednesday. . .

Not Minneapolis-Saint Paul, Minnesota, but it sure looked like this at times during the winters when I lived there. There was one time during January 2004 when the temperature never climbed above zero degrees Fahrenheit for three weeks. When, finally, we had an early February day where the mercury reached the low 20s, people walked around without hats, unzipped their winter coats, and removed their gloves. It felt like balmy springtime. . . and then the temperature dropped below zero degrees F. once more.

Not much happening here at the moment. Quiet is good. The Young Master and Grand Duchess have gone to a dentist appointment and thence to the area IKEA in search o thoe oddly sized seven watt light bulbs that some of their accent lamps take. What a shame that it is so difficult to find and purchase these in other places, but you can't begrudge anyone for wanting to take a periodic browse around the place.

Our play-by-email refight of Sittangbad is underway, and my task, in the guise of General von Tschtaschke, is withdrawing my battered forces through the town of Sittangbad and across the bridge over the Weser River before General MacDuff can either interere with, or prevent me from so doing. I've already sent Greg my initial orders for Move One, and, hopefully, things will go a bit better this time around. We'll see how things shape up. Be sure to check back later for an update.

-- Stokes

The initial positions of my forces, which must withdraw toward the camera across the Weser River in the foreground pursued relentlessly by General MacDuff. General von Tschatschke issues orders from horseback on the village green. Hopefully, he will will remain on task this time and neither spot the tavern, nor the accompanying serving wenches. He dresses well enough, but impulse control seems to be an issue.

And here is where things stand for General von Tschatschke at the close of Move One. He has ordered his infantry closest to the bridge to begin crossing it first, followed by the subsequent two units of cavalry as and when it can. These mounted units have been given strict instructions to avoid bunching up with the infantry they follow, so their colonels might need to hold off for another move or two before they can lead their men across the River Weser to relative safety.

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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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