Taking a "No Day" in the Grand Duchy of Stollen. . .

Here is an old Knoetel print I've always enjoyed, a bunch of Prussian hussars clowing around with the contents of a French officer's trunk.

It is Saturday morning (Yes!), and I am taking a "No Day" here at the Grand Duchy of Stollen, saying "No!" to most other things besides tinkering with 20 RSM95 Prussian musketeers (the final batch of that large 80-figure regiment begun in January 2015). I will also listen to jazz online from Norwegian State Radio (NRK Jazz) all day, begin organizing my ideas for a hobby-related article that is due before long, and take a closer look at the contents of a nice little package that arrived earlier this week from Fife & Drum Miniatures.

The latter contains a bunch of Prussian and Austrian limbers, limber riders, and 64 limber horses. Christmas all over again in a way, which it was since I finally applied a Christmas 2015 gift from my in-laws (plus a bit of my own scratch) to the purchase. The coming summer will see me then keeping the grass mowed (a fairly mindless and innocuous activity that I enjoy), working on 16 four-horse gun teams with limbers, and developing yet another article, this time of a more serious nature for eventual publication in an academic/pedagogic journal if all goes well when everything has been said and done.

But that is putting the limber before the horse(s)! Today, a quiet, relatively easy "No Day" at home with the Young Master (we have a date to play with his knights and castle too), the Grand Duchess, the cats, and, of course. . . the toy soldiers. As a music professor friend of ours once observed tongue-in-cheek to my wife several years ago, "It's soldier season. It's always soldier season. You've married a nerd, honey!" I wear my badge loudly and proudly. And now, it's time for another mug of coffee.

-- Stokes

Comments

Conrad Kinch said…

That's sounds like an excellent way to spend the day. Any prospect of getting the lads on the table soonish?

9:39 AM

Der Alte Fritz said…

#noday

:)

11:36 AM

Whiskers said…

Lucky you. I am also trying a "no" day but I have a wife and a dog, so it has become a "well, all right then" day :-(

8:00 AM

Neil Moulden said…

I had a "drive the wife and kids to the mother in laws, then back home for 4 hours of painting day" on Saturday. Managed to finish some Napoleonic French Dragoons.: )

12:10 PM

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...

Continued Regional Map Revisions. . .

F ooled around a bit more with the revised map just before and after dinner this evening, using the Fotor app to reinsert missing text . I also removed a few other things using the 'Magic Eraser' function, which works surprisingly well. Now, we're getting somewhere. I just have to figure out how to ensure that the text is all a uniform font style and maybe figure out a way to add a few bunches of trees to suggest forested areas, Ninja AI is not always entirely cooperative to the tune of "I'm sorry Dave. I can't do that." -- Stokes

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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