A December 14th Cuirassier Update. . .

The now familiar place-holder for a later photographic update. But in the meantime, I kinda like this well-used artist's palette.

Spent another 90 minutes or so in the painting chair last night -- before reconvening with the Grand Duchess to enjoy a second glass of an Argentinian red wine (I know, I know. . . living life on the bloody edge here in the Grand Duchy) -- finally seeing to a variety of smaller details. These included the kettle drum heads and mallets, exposed pistol stocks and holster ends, and the green chevrons along the sleeves of one of the musicians.

I finished the session by starting to apply washes of white to raised areas of the trumpeter's coat. Neither quite pleased with, nor done with that quite yet, but hope to return this evening after a round of final student team projects and decorating the trees, which I am headed out to pick up midday today (Saturday).

Somewhere in the painting left to do, I must also retouch the black neck stocks of several (all?) figures. These were mistakenly painted dark green earlier when, in fact, they are not the kollet collars, which, on these Eureka figures, seem to be obscured by the cuirasses and shoulder belts.

Ok,time for a second mug of coffee and some cinnamon raisin toast at the breakfast table with the Young Master.

-- Stokes

Comments

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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