A Minden Bosniak Update. . .

Here's where we stand at the moment. . . Still quite a way to go with the ol' paintbrush though.

Plugging away bit by bit at the painting table. Anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours a day as time permits. The basic horse coats and uniform colors are done. Still a few manes and tales to do on some of the chestnuts, but that will be quick, and the it's on to the basic saddle cloths plus the fleshtone for the riders and highlights on the reds and blacks. If that goes quickly, who knows?

After much dithering about how I was going to paint these figures, in the end, I decided to paint them up as a squadron of, well, Bosniaks in their striking red and black uniforms. . . Although I had toyed with the idea of blue and white based on Von Natzmer Uhlans of the WAS era. Next time.

Anyway, the three illustrations below have been my point of reference so far for my version -- 'rendition'? -- of Frederick's Bosniak Corps attached to his hussars. A striking uniform I think you'll agree.
----------

In other tabletop news, I am thinking ahead to the next game in my fictitious campaign (started last summer) for Christmas Week. I'm vacillating between a refight of Hook's Farm, or Guilford Courthouse, a battle from the Southern campaign of the American War of Independence that has always fascinated me due the presence of German mercenaries AND some cavalry on both sides. More on this as we get a bit closer to the Christmas Festival itself.

-- Stokes

Comments

Independentwargamesgroup said…

They are lovely sculpts Stokes and I like the idea of using them as Bosniaks. Mine are painted as De Saze bodyguard to escort his bath chair. Either way they are lovely figures. I will be interested as to how you paint black which an be a problem at times.

2:29 PM

CelticCurmudgeon said…

My Dear Heinz-Ulrich, greetings!

The Bosniaks are just the right touch to add some genuine punch to your forward elements. They are heavy enough to chase away scouting elements on foot sent by your enemy and fast enough to decline combat with heavier enemy cavalry. The other piece is that they look really good and should brighten any battlefield.

May you and the royal family have a wonderful Holiday!

Gerardus Magnus
Archbishop Emeritus

7:37 AM

tidders said…

Coming along nicely

Go Stokes ! :)

8:51 AM

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

Search This Blog