Further Croat Progress. . .

Another 90 minutes or so in the painting chair yesterday evening once the house was still. The session saw very slow painting with a fairly new #1 synthetic round in which I carefully applied acrylic colors to the capes slung over the shoulders of most of the Minden figures comprising this 14-figure company. The RSM95s in the firing pose have their capes fashioned into overstuffed bundles atop their upper backs. I've turned a couple of these around to show them here.

Most figures had a coat of GW Khorne Red applied to their capes while the others received light gray, a yellowish leather brown, or dark brown. The red, leather brown and light gray will get corresponding Army Painter washes this evening if time permits. Since I pull out of here tomorrow morning for another solo cr0ss-ocuntry skiing jaunt two hours north, a bit of grip and glide waxing is in order for two pairs of skis, so we'll have to see how things progress.

In any case, next week is our Spring Break Week here at MSU, which means nine slightly more relaxed days largely to myself here at home. With that in mind, the next painting session will be devoted to applying careful washes again, to the capes and muskets before moving on to the numerous small details. Hair locks, queues, and mustaches probably make the most sense for a start.

-- Stokes

A Found Figure Thursday Afternoon P.S.

Well, I just KNEW there were 15 Croats, and this afternoon during a quick break between Zoom meetings, I thought to peek into the clear acrylic box over on the other desk where in-progress figures stay between painting sessions. And what do you think I found?

Yep. The missing (overlooked?) RSM95 Croat in the standing and firing position but still in his bare metal state. Grrrr. I thought it was odd that the current in-progress batch had just 14 figures, and was all set to blame the cats for its disappearance, but sometimes the mind plays tricks on us. So, next week once I am back from skiing up north, it will be time to bring him up the same level of completion of the other 14 figures in the batch.

I am semi-pleased to have found him, yet also mildly annoyed that a few extra hours will be necessary to get him up to speed with his fellows. I know, I know. First World problem.

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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