Glossing and Basing the Wurtemburg and Hessen-Kassel Grenadiers. . .

Soubise, his aide, and the paint bottles are more in focus, but this photograph provides a decent idea of the composite grenadier battalion painted during July. Just a few tiny touch-ups around the edges of several green bases, and we're ready to tack 'em down to the Litko bases! Monsieur Soubise and aide merely need some groundwork this evening, and then I can also call them finished.

Here there are. . . My recently FINISHED composite battalion of Minden (Prussian) grenadiers in the midst of permanent basing. Largely based on illustrations (Kronoskaf and Knoetel) of Wurtemburg's 6th Hausgrenadiere and Hessen-Kassel's von Hessenstein Regiment, circa 1749. Some of the tiny details are not quite right, but overall I am pleased with how things turned out.

The acrylic varnish on them is my usual is Liquitex 'High Gloss,' suggested to me by Mike Siggins some years ago, and I have applied 2 and 1/2 coats to get'em really nice and shiny. I say 2 and 1/2 because I went back and applied a third coat to the higher areas of the figures (shoulders, arms, raised fronts of thighs, toes of boots, and tops of heads) for added protection and to catch the light. So, some areas actually have three coats of the stuff.

Almost time to move on now, and while I have not yet decided what exactly will be my next painting project (Where do I start?), I will first apply 2 and 1/2 coats of varnish to that combined two-squadron regiment of RSM95 horse grenadiers in bearskins that were finished last winter in December or January. Seems like a good idea since I'd like to include them in a forthcoming game.

Speaking of which. . . A refight of Blasthof Bridge is on the books for later this (Sunday) afternoon using my Brigades in a Box concept. Toss a terrain sheet over one end of the table, lay out a few scenic items, set up the two small forces, and away we go!

-- Stokes

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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