Sachsen-Hildburghausen Contingent Almost Finished. . .

Here is where the current batch of figures stands. Not brightened at all to avoid blitzing the raised areas and other details. Still not as good a photograph as some that I've taken in the past with my lightbox, but it is a work-in-progress picture after all.

Well, Sir. . . I took the Friday afternoon off from article writing and made a real push to address a bunch of small details on my version of the Sachesen-Hildburghausen contingent that was part of the Ernestine Sachsen Regiment. A few tiny touch-ups still to do. I also see, much to my chagrin, that the eight musketeers in the middle distance still need their white shirt cuffs painted in, darn it! This evening after the Young Master's bedtime then.

In other hobby news, I received a bunch of laser cut bases by Litko in the mail today, so the next thing to do after the figures above get their gloss varnish and are based up with the rest o the 80-igure regiment, is to begin preparing 10 or 12 Minden/Fife & Drum Prussian and Austrian gun limbers, riders, and 40-48 limber horses for basing and base-coating. This should be fun and round out my various two-gun batteries and crews nicely. I've also go a few ideas for additional horse colors to keep things from getting too dull. You know. You've got to beat the Tedium Demon at his own game. Hmmm. . . That sounds like a line from an old Motorhead tune. It should have been on Side B of the No Sleep Till Hammersmith live album.

In the same package, were a bunch of amorphous "terrain bases" of various sizes, to which I'll eventually affix my large collection of 5" cake decoration trees (72 of 'em for about US$5.99 if memory serves me correctly) after slapping on a couple of coats of medium dark green latex paint. This will make more sense when I post a few photographs of the finished items at month's end, but the idea is to have a bunch of wooded bases that can represent everything from lines of trees and small thickets to larger copses, medium sized woods, and even extensive forest areas without to much trouble. What I envision is something similar to the two-three tree bases that show up in old photographs of Charles Grant Sr.'s games, but modified a bit to reflect my own thinking about demarcating wooded areas in a somewhat more realistic way on the wargaming table.

-- Stokes

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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

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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