Waterloo Day 2019. . .

The composite battalion of grenadiers nears the finish line. Almost. Besides the white trim on the red silk bags, you'll notice that I've added a dark gray highlight (now, there's an oxymoron) to the edges of the officers' cocked hats and the upper reaches of the other ranks' bearskins.

What would Waterloo Day be without a little toy soldiering in the form of painting? So, after lunch, I held the ol' breath for half an hour or so and applied thin lines of white to the latest batch of six enlisted men (the back row of figures in white uniforms at right), specifically the red silk bags atop the bearskin bonnets.

The brief session went reasonably well with only two or three very small touch-ups necessary, despite The Young Master and one of our cats playing nearby, which diverts the concentration considerably. Ahem.

In any case, I'll tackle the final six figures this evening, and then all that remains to do are the two brass drums. I will probably not attempt to apply brass faceplates to the bearskins, as worn by the Kurkoeln and Hessen-Darmstadt troops on which these are based for two reasons. First, the bearskins on the Minden Austrians that I have used, and of which I have scads remaining in the lead pile, do not have that particular feature sculpted onto them. Second, given that, the better part of valor is to be satisfied with how things are coming along and not risk fouling up what has so far been a reasonably good paint job.

You know? Why risk time consuming mistakes with the brush at this late stage?

In other news, The Grand Duchess left this morning for a conference in Hawaii. A week in Hawaii! No matter. The Young Master and I will continue enjoying our summer vacation together in her absence.

He has been finished with school for about a week and, besides playing outside, the occasional bike ride with Dad around the neighborhood, practicing his piano, various appointments of his own, plus a visit to the periodontist for Dad's stitches to come out this morning, has started his own school. Menagerie Elementary School began yesterday.

Young Master Paul, in the role of teacher, takes his animals through an attenuated day, teaching and reviewing all manner of subjects like mathematics, science, reading, and social studies as well as keeping his animal students in line during class time and supervising them at both lunch and recess periods. For a child who complains loudly about school and compares it to prison, he sure seems to like/miss it already.

Clearly his 3rd Grade teacher Mr. H. really made quite an impression this year. Who knows? Maybe we have another (future) educator in the family?

-- Stokes

Menagerie Elementary is in session! Mr. Paul getting his animals ready to start the school day this morning with The Pledge of Allegiance.

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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