Officers, NCOs, and Musicians. . .

Fotor is my new online editor of choice. Not completely free (US$39.99 per year), but fairly intuitive and nice, bright results. Better even than Pixlr X. You get what you pay for I suppose.

Making time for painting in and amongst all of the last minute preparations for the new semester, which kicks off next Wednesday, September 1st here at MSU. Working on completing my version of the Schaumburg-Lippe infantry with officers, NCOs, and musicians. The flags will probably be the final cherry on top before glossing and permanent basing.

The 48 infantry privates have, by the way, been stowed away in a plastic carrier for safe keeping until the later glossing stage. My work area was becoming too crowded, and I feared cats, 11-year old fingers, an errant spill or drops of paint would inadvertently spoil previous brushwork.

But anyway.

You can see that I am really making the effort to keep the highlighting more subtle than on units of the past, really just touching the brush to high points. Still not quite as skillfully done as others', but a bit better. Restraint seems to be the operative word.

I recall reading 20+ years ago in a book on painting larger scale military miniatures by either Bill Horan, or Sheperd Paine that the trick with dark blues, dark greens, and black is to keep the highlights very sparing since these uniform colors were so dark in reality. At least before the ravages of active campaigning.

Of course, there is artistic license to consider, and we do want our colors to show up on the table, so some leeway is desirable I think.

I recall many years ago taking a stab at some tiny Peter Laing 15mm Prussians for the Franco-Prussian war, using Armory Prussian blue straight from the bottle. They looked almost black, which was not quite the effect I had hoped for. Ol' Mom, a trained painter and sculptor, explained the concept of artistic license to me as well as mixing (toning down and/or brightening) colors, which made all the difference in later efforts with the brush.

Incidentally, I must admit to being happy with the way the whites are turning out on this unit of figures. A light gray undercoat followed by several successive washes of white until it looks about right, culminating with pure, undiluted pigment on the uppermost areas, the upper left thighs of the marching figures for example. It seems to produce a very pleasing blend once everything has dried.

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So, today is Saturday, and I have several journal articles to plow through in preparation for a faculty reading group on student engagement and success that a colleague and I will lead this year. Plus the inevitable mowing the lawn (twice each week to encourage thick growth). But, I hope to return to these for an hour or so this evening.

-- Stokes

A revised (or retouched) photograph of the first 48 figures using Fotor.

It's Early Days Yet. . .

M aking some early progress with Batch A of the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment over the last several days/evenings. Nothing terribly exciting just yet, but the basic black, brown, and flesh areas are done as are the green bases, and gray undercoat. The latter two areas needed some careful retouching early in the week. Next up, the neck stocks. I might just do these in red for the enlisted men although some of my source material suggest they were black, but I always look for an excuse to shake things up a bit. Any errant splotches of red (or black) can be covered with another application of light gray before I move onto the next step. "Giddy up!" as one Cosmo Kramer might have said. -- Stokes

A Little More Brushwork. . .

A little more brushwork on the first batch of (my version of) the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment yesterday (Saturday). Taking a different tack this time and addressing many of the details first before the white coats and other larger areas of uniform. The eagle-eyed among you will notice that I've painted the (dark) red stocks of the enlisted men. Always a difficult and frustrating item to paint, it made sense to paint from the inside out as it were and get that particular detail out of the way first rather than try to paint it in later after much other painting has been accomplished. Trying to reduce the need for later retouching of other items on the figures you understand. Hopefully, I will be able to get back to these later today after a second trip back to the Apple Store for help with a couple of new iPad issues and, following the return home, some revision of Google Slides for tomorrow's meetings with my students. -- Stokes P.S. And according t...

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 ...

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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