A Bit of Spring Break Painting. . .

I returned to the painting desk for about an hour Sunday evening to retouch a few of the light brown water bottle straps across the front of several chests and add a bit of Army Painter red wash in that crevice between the left lapel and musket stock. As my Welsh step-father might say, they're starting to look very smart.

March 1st. The first weekend that bookends our spring vacation at my university. And like clockwork, I came down with the same nasty cold and slight fever the Young Master brought home earlier last week. The very day before I was due to leave for my last solo ski trip of the season up north. Blast!

Everything was packed and ready to load into the car early Friday morning for the slightly more than two-hour drive north. But I realized about 10:30 Thursday evening that I felt rotten, and it would be a mistake to proceed as planned. Sigh.

Felt even crummier Friday morning with chills, nasal congestion, and sore throat. Blagh. Motel reservations cancelled and back to bed for several hours.

So, I've spent the last three days in bed for the most part, or briefly camped out down here in Zum Stollenkeller in pajamas and bathrobe with the cats and some coffee nearby, which kind of makes things a little better. Just a bit. Funny how cats, dogs, and other pets manage to raise our spirits when we are down.

But, today is Sunday, the sun is out, and everything has been brightened outside with a fresh coating of snow in the night, which cheers me up. And I have actually felt like returning to the painting desk in lieu of navigating challenging climbs and descents at my usual Nordic ski center haunt.

Here's where things stand at the moment with the final third of the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment, six months after starting this particular project on September 1st last year. Quite a bit of additional edge clean-up using my usual Quaker Gray craft paint, Vallejo black, and Citadel Khorne Red depending on which part of the 20 or so castings we're talking about.

Still lots to do, of course, but the figures are gradually looking a bit neater in appearance and a bit more, well, soldierly. Planning another hour or so this evening after dinner and then (hopefully) at least an hour a day for the next seven evenings, which should move things along nicely. I would like to get these all finished, glossed, and permanently based by the end of the month, so I can move on to the 55 or 60 Austrian hussar and horse castings as planned.

That series of painting tasks should take me through the rest of the year and (very probably) into early 2027. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

On an interesting and related side note, some updates to the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment are featured in the most recent entry on the Project Seven Years War website. And a little digging around elsewhere online suggests that these two formations were one and the same. A pointI have wondered about for a number of years now.

It would seem, and someone please correct me if I am wrong, that the regiment raised in 1761 by Prince Friedrich-August of Anhalt-Zerbst to serve in the Austrian army of the SYW-era later contributed men and arms to support the British effort in the AWI. Which would explain the uniquely "white" Austrian-style uniforms purportedly worn by the unit in North America.

Speculative of course, so if any readers can direct me to additional information that might confirm (or dispel) my suspicions, please do so.

-- 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

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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