A Little Christmas Dry-brushing. . .

A brightened and cropped photograph of the Eureka figures that have given me such painting fits the last year or so. Inching ever closer toward completion now though. But do remind me to stick to Minden, Fife & Drum, and Crann Tara miniatures next time!

The dry-brushing softened the previously painted on 'full strength' highlights very nicely I think while also helping to pick out the manes, tails, and some of the musculature on the horses. In general, I am pleased. Not perfect by any stretch, but we're getting there.

After two separate sessions in the painting chair yesterday (Saturday), the dry-brushing on the 16 nominally "black" horses is just about finished. I have used a bottle of cheap craft paint -- Delta Ceramcoat 'Charcoal' -- to highlight the black areas of my figures -- typically painted with a thinned coat or two of Anita's All Purpose Acrylic Craft Paint -- for a coupla three years or so now, and it occurred to me that dry-brushing the charcoal gray onto horses already undercoated black might yield pleasing results. Of course, the fine steeds show up in the photograph as very dark grays, but we need to apply a bit of artistic license when it comes to our brushwork, right?

Now, some painters apply a dry-brush of dark blue to bring out the highlights on black horses and produce highly convincing results. I tried something similar years ago on 30 Spencer Smith/Holger Eriksson charging dragoons, and was somewhat less than bowled over by my particular results. That could have been the figures, the shade of paint used, my own less experienced painter's hand, or possibly some combination of the three. In any case, I think the current squadron and regimental staff should look reasonably good once finished. See what you think.

Speaking of dry-brushing, I did this with an old, cheap hogs hair brush of some kind, featuring roughly 1/4" squared bristles. But it go me thinking. Have any of you ever tried the more modern dry-brushing tools based on ladies' eye-shadow applicators?

And just in case anyone out there is wondering "How in the hell does he know what those are called??!!" Well, let's just say that yours truly came of age as a young rocker (bassist, guitarist, and singer) during the glam rock revival of the early to mid-1980s and leave it at that. But don't you dare tell my students! ;-)

Kind Christmas Week Regards,

Stokes

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

Fitz-Badger said…

Nice work!

I tried some cheap makeup brushes for drybrushing, but they seem too soft for the job. I really only use them for a primer drybrush (after painting a black or gray gesso for primer, I then drybrush with white gesso). For other drybrushing, I want smaller brushes and more control.

9:30 PM

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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