Nearing the Finish with Batch #3. . .

Having a "No Day" this Saturday, as my late mother would have put it. Just saying no to everyone, everything, and enjoying some me time. What better way to do that than to continue brushwork on the current batch of 16 figures? I thought you'd agree.

This time around, I tried taking pictures with my iPhone. I think they are marginally better than those taken with my now venerable Sony Cybershot although I am not quite sure. In any case, PixlrX still is not cooperating and refuses to open any of my images, so these are the raw pictures without any autofix, adjusting for brightness, or cropping.

Still, they provide a reasonable idea of where things are at the moment.

Remaining tasks include the queues at the back as well as highlighting visible hair and curls at the temples, mustaches, and metallics (musket barrels and firelocks plus brass fittings, cartridge pouch badges, and the few visible buttons), plus the inevitable touch-ups. And then I will be free to forge ahead to the final 13 officers, NCOs, and musicians plus the ol' mounted officer and horse before flags, glossing, and permanent basing.

With the start of school on September 1st for yours truly, maybe we are looking at another month's work on the current unit? We'll have to see, but I am eager to finish these, so The Young Master and I can return to his battalion of Prussian garrison infantry.

I'd also like to tackle a couple of mounted generals or perhaps a couple of guns with crew in time for Young Paul's 12th birthday at the end of October, or Christmas if time becomes scarce in the meantime. The latter is probably the more realistic view if we are honest.

Beyond that, another squadron or two of cavalry followed another regiment of line infantry, this time an Austrian regiment with some wonderfully striped flags is the plan. But we're getting ahead of ourselves here! Quite a bit in the planned queue before that particular project takes shape.

-- Stokes

Comments

Wellington Man said…

Your endless patience with these enormous regiments always pays off spectacularly, Stokes. These are looking fantastic.
I try not to think too much about what's lined in the queue when I'm painting, but usually fail!
Best regards
WM

1:28 PM

Matt said…

I do admire your "big battalions". They are coming along very nicely and I am very interested in your future plans. I have definitely developed a leaning towards the tricorne era of late but on a far more modest scale.

3:56 PM

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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