July Painting Challenge: Day #26. . .

The unit in question this (Sunday) morning. Very nearly there with just three days left of July.

The following update should have been posted two days ago on Friday morning, but my camera needed charging for photographs, and then the day got away from me with mowing and assorted yardwork outside followed by a shower, change of clothes, and an evening out for dinner, just the two of us, with The Grand Duchess. Anyway, here is the update from Friday morning:

The Young Master had an early eye exam at 8: 10 this morning, and his mother, bless her, took him. So, I had some unanticipated free time and took the opportunity to refill my coffee mug and head down here to Zum Stollenkeller and get to it!

Lots of niggling little details at this point as we near the finish line. I spent about an hour working on the drums carried by the two drummers who are part of this 33-strong grenadier battalion. While I took care of the brass shells yesterday, the heads, hoops, and cords needed doing. This is one of those times when you don't breathe and brace your hands to keep them as still as possible. Especially when it comes to those tiny diagonal stripes of contrasting color on the drum hoops!

I went with conjecture and gave the Wurttemburg Hausgrenadiere drummer yellow hoops with black diagonal stripes for his drum, while the Hessen-Kassel Hessenstein drum hoops were painted white with orange diagonal stripes, according to the information presented on the Project Seven Years War website for this particular regiment.

The process of painting drumhoops never seems to get much easier, but 28mm drummer figures are preferable to work with compared to 'true' 15mm miniatures, like the Minifig 'Super Detail' Napoleonics on which I cut my painting teeth many years ago. Still, I don't think I took a breath for the better part of an hour as I worked on the two drums, but they came out reasonably without that many errors to touch-up. Strangely.

Afterwards, it was time to give the enlisted figures their mustaches (Not too much trouble here!) with my trusty old 000 sable, still useful after more than two decades, before moving on to things like: wigs and queues, gaiter buttons for the half of the battalion in off-white gaiters, officers' swords and knots, sword scabbards,white sleeve cuffs (where visible), and officers' gloves.

That, according to the almighty To Do list should just about get things to the touch-up and glossing stages. Just five days left in July. . . Can I make the deadline of Midnight on July 31st?

-- Stokes

Sunday Morning P.S.
By my reckoning, the remaining items to paint before glossing and permanent basing include:

1) Whale Bones on the rear of the mitre caps (not looking forward to these)
2) Officers' sashes, gloves, and any remaining gorgets
3) Scabbards (hilts, tips, highlights, any visible straps)
4) Wigs/Hair
5) Queues
6) Gaiter buttons on the half of battalion with white gaiters.

Mercifully, the half of the battalion in coats with (yellow) Swedish cuffs do not seem to have that tiny sliver of shirt cuff sculpted/visible, making my work a little easier.

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

Independentwargamesgroup said…

Well they're coming along fine now Stokes.As Ive said before they are a lot more difficult to paint than RSM etc but do come up really well. I've had a battalion of Saxon grenadiers sat on my table for nearly two years now, I just havent had the inclination to complete them especially as I moved onto easier projects. Stick at it they look great.

12:44 PM

WSTKS-FM Worldwide said…

Thank you! Still a few things to do yet, but almost there. Of course, they'll probably run away in the first game they're used in. ;-)

Best Regards,

Stokes

7:39 PM

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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