A Thorough Washing. . .

Back in the painting saddle this evening after an amazing, yet very tiring, ski trip up north during the weekend just ended. Tonight's painting session was all about giving this company of Croats a good washing. The washes really helped define the basic larger areas of the figures, tone down the initial colors just a bit, and add some richness to those same browns, blues, reds, and yellows.

Various Army Painter products were used including Strong Tone, Mid-Brown, Blue, and Red washes. The figures are still wet in this photo, but I missed the officer's dolman, plus discovered the underside of a left arm still in need of its basic Mahogany Brown (Grrr. . .). Will have to attend to those first thing tomorrow evening.

But, they don't look half bad at this point. I'm even toying with the idea of not going back to highlight raised areas with the original colors as initially planned and just leave them as is. I kind of like their muted, slightly rough, yet still colorful appearance. It seems entirely fitting for Croats. What do you think?

Wednesday evening, I'll take a stab at the mustaches and hair queues. Still lots to do if that step goes well, but it's getting late and time to join the Grand Duchess for our nightly yoga and meditation, which really help the two of us relax when cross-country skiing is not an option.

Speaking of which, I'm heading back up north on Friday morning for another 2.5-day jaunt at Forbush Corner Nordic Ski Center outside of Frederic, Michigan. Lot's of things finally falling into place technique-wise, with some solid feedback from the two coaches I've worked with the last three years. As I quipped to my sister the other day in a text, "And it's only taken 25 years of practice!"

I am clinging to winter as long as possible, you understand, to practice on the 45km of groomed trails and solidify various skills before the long off-season interrupts routine skiing once again. Sigh. I'd be out on the snow six months of the year if I could. As the saying goes, think snow and embrace the winter.

-- Stokes

Comments

Donnie McGibbon said…

They are looking good Stokes, nice work on those dastardly Croats, they are lovely figures too.

10:52 PM

pancerni said…

Wonderful looking Croats, certainly are good for the table here.
I will try to send you our excess snow. You will make better use of it.

4:20 AM

Andy McMaster said…

Those are coming along nicely.

12:52 PM

David Morfitt said…

Nice work, Stokes. :-)

12:35 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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