A December Painting Update. . .

A colorful, if slightly pretentious placeholder until I have a few recent photographs to share. of these blasted Saxons. Thanks to everyone who sent encouraging comments for the previous post.

Well, it's 10:38am on Saturday morning. The Grand Duchess and Young Master have headed to Chicago for a 36-hour pre-Christmas mother-son trip via train, leaving yours truly -- along with with the cats and fish -- unsupervised for a couple of days. What to do? What to do?

Yes, my thought exactly. High time to say "No" to everything else and get back to the painting table. Where things have stalled the last week since the Thanksgiving holiday due to the usual end-of-term things. It's the same old song and dance as Steven Tyler once sang.

But what of the Eureka 28mm Saxon cavalry? In truth, it has been slow going, but little by little as the old Robert Plant song from about 1984 or '85 goes. A few slow, painstaking sessions here and there, trimming in green around the horses' hooves to clean things up a bit before moving onto other equine parts.

The loose plan has been to get the horses and horse furniture more or less finished before returning to the officers, troopers, and musicians to wrap up brushwork there. As the academic term winds down, I aim to build an hour of painting time into each evening once the Young Master has retired to bed and the house is still.

And on that note. . . Ah, children! Or should I say teenagers. I, of course, brought my own challenges to my family at his age, but I was quiet about them. My late mother had an important rule from the time I was about nine or ten during weekends and holidays. You can stay up as late as you want, but you need to be quiet. A good rule for older children and teenagers I think, but one the Young Master has trouble following sometimes. Boisterous is an apt term. Sigh.

Happy Advent, by the way, if you operate on the Julian calendar and are looking forward to the Christmas season. If I had to ask for just one thing this year, it would be more calm, quiet, and tranquility on the domestic and more broadly where the outside world is concerned. Barring that, more fresh, strong coffee. Speaking of which. . .

Ok, enough pointless blather. Time to dress, refill the coffee mug, and return to Zum Stollenkeller for some uninterrupted soldier painting. I'll pop in later with an actual photo update or three.

-- Stokes

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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...

Basic Reds Done at Last. . .

S till quite a way to go with the current batch of 20 human figures and a horse (of course), but they're actually starting to look like something after all of the red distinctions. Quite a bit of painting in hour-long sessions the last week as and when time has allowed. Mostly applying the basic dark red to facing areas and turnbacks followed by the inevitable touch-ups to clean up wobbly edges and those misplaced, minute splotches of Citadel Khorne Red. They're looking like so many Austrian infantry regiments of the era at this point, but the eventual flags will turn them magically into the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment, more or less, of the AWI period. But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. One frustrating point (ahem) of sad discovery. I've started trying to use those Winsor & Newton 'Series Seven' brushes (#1 rounds) purchased last spring, and the blasted things simply will not keep a point. Very frustrating since I have heard over the y...

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

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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