Back in the Painting Saddle Again. . .

Bavaria

Wurttemburg

Well, if our G.D. internet connection were more cooperative -- a problem for the last two blasted days -- I'd have a bit more to write here. Suffice to say, I will start on the first squadron of an eventual two-squadron regiment of RSM95 heavy cavalry in bearskins later today by gluing riders onto horses and, hopefully, getting white acrylic gesso basecoat on at least some of them. While I might still paint one squadron in dark blue, I'll definitely paint one in red, based on either Bavarian or Wurttemburg heavy cavalry of the mid-18th century. It's simply too good a temptation to resist, and about the only way I'll ever get a unit approaching the dramatic Scots Greys on the table given my mid-18th century, semi-fictitious, quasi-Germanic focus. The Grand Duchy of Stollen is, after all, rather far away from the plains of Belgium!

-- Stokes

Later. . .
Righty-oh! Riders have been glued into place, right arms repositioned since the figures are cast with sheathed (scabarded???) swords, and everything has been cemented onto pair-sized bases according to In the Grand Manner dimensions (40mm x 45mm). Photograph to follow later if our internet connection cooperates, damn its eyes!

Comments

Wellington Man said…

Hurrah! Painting soldiers is what you were born for, Stokes!
Very glad to see you back in the painting saddle. Clippity Clop. Or should that be slippity slop?

2:38 PM

captbill said…

The Reich Duke looks forward to reviewing these brave lads...captbill

6:12 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

Search This Blog