Skip to main content

July Painting Challenge: Day #16. . .

 Painting more carefully now to avoid getting new paint on figures parts already completed.  Just a few more white shoulder belts to go!


Some time in the painting chair yesterday evening following an afternoon of dental games with the periodontist preparing for an implant later in the month.  Fun, fun, fun.

Back home, after the usual early evening activities around dinner, cleaning up, and bedtime for The Young Master, plus my evening walk around the neighborhood, I got back down to business and returned to the painting table.  This short session saw me applying white to the shoulder belts that support the black cartridge pouches on the right hip of most figures pictured.  

My two decade old 000 sable served me well, and just over an hour later, most of the figures were done with this particular step.  After a haircut this morning, I'll return to finish these, do the white waist belts, and add some sparing highlights for the brown  shoulder belts.  This evening, musket straps, which should go pretty quickly, and some other items on the list, which I've included below.

One thing about these Minden figures.  There is considerable detail to paint!  Lots of gear sculpted onto the castings in other words.  Others, like many in the RSM95 range, are more forgiving and ready to go sooner given the relative lack of extra items there, very little except for a musket, cartridge pouch, and shoulder belts for example.  

However, my view is that the finished product is well worth the extra time, effort, and, yes, occasional frustration.  There is no doubt that Minden miniatures, along with those by Fife & Drum and Crann Tara, provide delightful gaming and even conversation pieces once completed.  So much of the historical miniatures wargaming hobby is, after all, wrapped up in the visual side of things.  Shouldn't we, as hobbyists, do our utmost to produce the most attractively painted figures possible?

Come on.  You know the answer already.

-- Stokes


The rather sobering  'To List' of the many items yet to paint.  Admittedly, some are quite small. but there is still a lot to address!

Comments

Well you are making progress Stokes. I particularly like the yellow facing unit. Blue and yellow always look good. I notice you leave the faces and hands until last which is contrary to convention. I settled for a compromise and give the skin a wash and then finish the skin off last. I feel I have completed the figure then.Best of luck with the units.

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 ...

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