A Mid-August Hussar Update. . .

My usual picture placeholder until I have a suitable photograph to share.

Thank you to everyone who has checked in during the last month and bit to see how the first 14 Austrian hussars are coming along. NOT finished yet. I've been struggling to motivate myself to pick up the brush since the last post at the start of July. BUT. . . I can report that the basic horse furniture is almost finished.

Another session or two planned for today, a very gray (and possibly) rainy Saturday, so just the sort of day one needs to press on and get the job done. That's about all you can do when painting horses. The end results are usually worth the time and effort, but getting there is a painting trial to say the least.

Spent a couple of hours yesterday (Friday) evening working on reins and bridles, making several mistakes along the way (Grrrrrrr. . .), which will need to be addressed by trimming in the original horseflesh colors once all of the various reins and other other straps have been finished. Another mug of coffee first, and then back to the painting table.

Wasn't there a John Wayne war picture with that title? Kidding aside, there is something kind of nice about an hour or two of painting while still in one's pajamas on a Saturday or Sunday morning. The absolute height of toy soldier decadence.

-- 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 ...

The 18th century? What's the Fascination?

Hessian musketeers by All the King's Men Toy Soldiers of Snellville, Georgia, U.S.A. Just a quick post post today, but I thought the above question might be interesting food for thought. Obviously, there is an array of possible periods, theaters, and conflicts that might catch our eyes. But what is it about the era 1700-1799 -- either real, or imagined? Is it the commanders and politics? The fairly straightforward tactics? The myriad of uniforms and flags? The variety and scope of the conflicts? The patchwork of various and sundry petty states, (at least in Central Europe)? I'm very interested to learn your thoughts. Don't be a lurker! Please leave a comment -- or even two or three. Have a nice day everyone!

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...

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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