Skip to main content

About Facings. . .

 

After several short(-er) painting sessions Sunday morning and early afternoon, here's where things stand with the final 15 Croats, based on the Slavonsich-Brooder Grenzer. In keeping with the muted palette, I used Army Painter 'Basilisk Brown' for the yellow facing color.  Fairly easy to apply to the cuffs but trickier for the visible edges of the coat collars. 

For a while, I toyed with the idea of applying a slightly brighter yellow highlight, at least to the cuffs, but decided against that in the end.   Fewer things are more frustrating than a snafu+ atop already reasonably good brushwork.  You know what I mean.

The trick seems to be to get only the tiniest bit of color onto the very tip of the bristles -- my trusty old 000 sable spotter that I've had for going on 25 years -- and deposit a drop or so onto the visible collar edges.  Be careful to leave some of the dark undercoat showing and wick away any excess with a damp brush quickly before it sets.  As always, not perfect, but good enough at arm's length I think. 

I also took the opportunity to begin addressing any visible sashes and finished with applying my usual very dark gray to the edges of the black cartridge pouches and shakos.  Must return to the latter this evening, or tomorrow for a bit of touching up, but the figures are getting there.  Of course, we're not out of the woods yet (That's a Croat joke, son!).  Still much to do, but I'm pleased enough with my progress since Friday evening, so it seems like a good idea to take a break and give the eyes a rest now.

-- Stokes

Comments

Phil said…
Coming to life, Stokes. Nearly there! Best rgds. Phil
Duke of Baylen said…
Glad you went with the collars too. You'll be -pleased to reach a new complete unit. If you're like me, the closer I get to finishing a unit the more I am planning the next one. And so the cycle repeats.
Stephen
Thank you for your kind words, gentlemen! Indeed, I am starting to think about the color of horses and which regiment I might use as a basis for the second half of those blasted 30 or so Eureka Saxon cuirassiers. Gotta get those done and off the table before moving onto the next couple of planned units in the queue: 36+ Minden Austrain hussars and about 60 infantry based on one or another of the Reichsarmee regiments. Must review the plan first though.

Kind Regards,

Stokes
caveadsum1471 said…
Lovely work, in contrast to your detailed approach I tend to have a number of units on the go so that I can share colours as I go and push a number of units along, these are already quite delightful!
Best Iain
Anonymous said…
The USA, well you cannot polish a turd can you?

Popular posts from this blog

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