Skip to main content

Happy Waterloo Day. . .



The Royal North British Dragoons and some members of the 92nd Highlanders  get stuck in with the French on the fateful day in June 1815.  I believe that's the eagle and standard of the 45th Line off to the left.


Lately, lots of lawn, garden, and real life -- in the form of recasting existing courses for online delivery come September -- getting in the way of any appreciable toy soldiering, but there we are as Bertie Wooster might put it. 

When I have been able to escape the computer and online training, it's been lots of marigolds, Begonias, Hostas, and edging of beds with the spade.  And then there is the grass, which must bee mowed twice a week to stay looking ship shape.  It's been pretty dry since mid-May though, so it's no longer as lush and green as ear;ier in the spring.  No amount of organic fertilizer  or biochar seems to help with summer dormancy during drier periods.

But enough of all that suburban dad stuff!  At the painting desk, I have been adding very dark blue highlights to all of that black horse tack as and when time has permitted though.  I know, I know. . .  But it just adds that extra little something before I call the 36 dragoon mounts finished and move on to the actual men and officers themselves.  In the meantime, I really must do something about this damned alliterative sickness!

-- Stokes

Comments

Matt said…
Patience in all things is the mark of a gentleman; Happy Waterloo Day to you too!
Marvin said…
A belated Happy Waterloo Day to you, sir!

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