Skip to main content

Gone Skiin'. . .

The Young Master and Dad having hot cocoa in the warming hut (with woodstove) of a local ski area Sunday afternoon.

Not much time at the painting table the last week or so I'm afraid.  We have accrued a rather impressive amount of snow on the ground here in Mid-Michigan, and so any free time has been taken up with cross-country skiing.  Yesterday, Sunday, afternoon we suited up and hit the trails in the woods around Lake Lansing, and it was amazing.  Great traction, fantastic glide, ideal temperatures (about 20 degrees Fahrenheit), and quite a few other skiers and snowshoe enthusiasts out enjoying the day.  

The Young Master has really come into his own on skis this winter and has become quite a daredevil on hills (he takes after his mother, who was part of an alpine skiing club when she went to high school in Reno, Navada).  These family outings on skis are always, in my view, some of the nicest times the three of us have together.  Very special hours together doing something that all three of us enjoy.  What more could you ask for?

 -- Stokes

Comments

Martin said…
Good memories made all 'round!
8:24 AM
Peter Douglas said…
Well done Stokes. I'm jealous, we've had a mix of no snow, lots of if ice and minus 40 weather plus then flu, so no skiing here.
8:51 AM
Carlo said…
Always special when one can have quality time with the family.
5:11 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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 ...
5 comments
Read more

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...
3 comments
Read more

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
1 comment
Read more