Water Bottle Straps and Edge Clean-ups. . .

Ok, back in the painting chair for a about an hour or so the last couple of evenings to hold my breath, carefully paint in the very thin lighter colored water bottle straps (Ral Partha Leather Brown), teach the cats a few quietly muttered blue words, and then clean up various edges to tidy up this third and final batch of the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment.

All in all, a couple of good evenings' brushwork I think.

Relatively pleased so far. At least they look a bit neater. This evening, the plan is to begin applying Citadel Khorne Red (my preferred dark red undercoat) to the shoulder straps (easy), the turnbacks (tricky), and visible insides of the officers' coats (trickier). This step might take a couple of evenings depending on how things progress. Stay tuned!

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The ol' body is bouncing back nicely from the recent three-day weekend of skiing up north. Tired, well-worked muscles and joints, yes, but not stiff or sore, which I take as a good sign. I credit the nightly yoga and meditation with the Grand Duchess, mentioned in previous posts, as well as improved, more efficient skiing technique during the last four seasons thanks to various lessons with the coaches at Forbush Corner Nordic Center. As I mentioned to one of them a few days ago, it is so nice to (finally) feel confident enough on skis that I can actually look around at the nature around me while gliding quietly (sometimes at speed) through it.

And of course there is that lingering post-ski tour euphoria even several days after the fact.

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Finally, for your listening pleasure, the latest earworm that has bee bouncing around my noggin for the last several days or so. Space Oddity by the late, great David Bowie. A tune I used to hear quite a bit on Philadelphia (93.3 WMMR) and Allentown (95.1 WZZO) rock radio years ago when life was a much simpler affair. Enjoy!

-- Stokes

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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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