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

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...

Basic Reds Done at Last. . .

S till quite a way to go with the current batch of 20 human figures and a horse (of course), but they're actually starting to look like something after all of the red distinctions. Quite a bit of painting in hour-long sessions the last week as and when time has allowed. Mostly applying the basic dark red to facing areas and turnbacks followed by the inevitable touch-ups to clean up wobbly edges and those misplaced, minute splotches of Citadel Khorne Red. They're looking like so many Austrian infantry regiments of the era at this point, but the eventual flags will turn them magically into the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment, more or less, of the AWI period. But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. One frustrating point (ahem) of sad discovery. I've started trying to use those Winsor & Newton 'Series Seven' brushes (#1 rounds) purchased last spring, and the blasted things simply will not keep a point. Very frustrating since I have heard over the y...

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

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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