Blues and Bags Done. . .

Blues and red silk bags done, red facings and turnbacks next, but I should probably finish up the metal bits on the horse tack before that.

A spectacular late summer evening here, cool, sunny, with just the sound of crickets in the background. A perfect time for an after dinner family bike ride around the neighborhood, or The Tour de Cul Sacs as we call it. The Young Master had so much fun that he requested we go around twice. We were away an hour. The longest he has ever ridden on his own bike under his own power. It was the most fun I've had since the three of us were out on cross-country skis together last winter.

Following his bedtime this evening, I stole back down here to Zum Stollenkeller Mk II to finish up the True Blue highlight on the jackets. Metal parts on the horse tack tomorrow, which shouldn't take too long, just small dabs of paint really, so I might take out three small shrubs in a couple of beds before the sun sets tomorrow evening. Ahhhhhh. . .

-- Stokes

A Saturday Morning P.S.

We have picked up another couple of followers in recent weeks, bringing the number to 250. Welcome, and I hope you enjoy reading about my various (mis-) adventures at the painting table, the lately very occasional game, and other hobby-related topics of interest. Sometimes, things get a bit whimsical here, and I veer wildly off-topic, but we'll try to keep things mostly in the realm of toy soldiers. Anyway, glad to have you following along.

Comments

Phil said…

Very nice!

2:08 AM

Wellington Man said…

It sounds idyllic, Stokes. A few more strokes of the brush, and you will be finished.
Best regards
WM

3:37 AM

Stryker said…

Coming along very nicely. I'm impressed that you can paint these with them mounted on stands in twos!

3:55 AM

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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