July Painting Challenge: Day #17. . .

Belts, buckles, and straps yesterday and today. Whew!

Only two weeks of July left to finish (hopefully) the current battalion of 33 figures and a horse. Of course.

A couple of sessions yesterday on either side of cleaning out the garage and another satisyfing period this morning after coffee before moving on to rehanging several pictures and a few commemorative plates that have been waiting for a year or more since we had some door and wall repairs made in one case, and the Grand Duchess decided to replace an older picture in the second.

Speaking of which, The Grand Duchess and Young Master are visiting grandparents in the Pacific Northwest this week, so yours truly is home alone. Scary, right? I always joke with my wife that my usual group of floozies will pick me up in their pink Cadillac for some fun and games in her absence. The spousal reply is typically something along the lines of "Sure, they will."

In any case, while my time is largely my own this week, I was asked to take care of a few things, and I added a number of others to the list that also need doing. It is indeed amazing what one can accomplish in a short time when left alone for several days to do so. Ahem.

So, after a doctor's appointment this afternoon and a trip to the supermarket on the way home, it's back to the painting table for another go around with these figures. I think it's time to paint and highlight the coat cuffs before moving onto anything else. You know. Before I somehow forget. After that, I need to highlight those water bottles atop the knapsacks of many figures shown above. I think a nice mix of silver and dark brown ought to give the right appearance for what were (presumably) tin items.

Very hot weather on the way for the next few days, so a good excuse to remain indoors comfortably ensconced down here in Zum Stollenkeller until cooler conditions prevail, and I can return to mowing and other assorted yardwork outside.

-- Stokes

For good measure, here is a better view of both halves of my composite grenadier battalion based on a Kronskaf illustration of Wurttemburg's Hausgrenadiers (left) and another by Knoetel portraying Hessen-Kassel's von Hessenstein Regiment ca. 1749 (right).

Comments

The Good Soldier Svjek said…

You are doing very well with these figures , keep it up !

1:18 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

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