Let's flesh out some geography, shall we?

During the last couple of weeks, I’ve been thinking about fleshing out the geographical names of my imaginary grand duchy, electorate, and principalities. I’ve decided to name my river(s) the Greater Zwischen and the Lesser Zwischen. Each flows into the main river, the Blue Zwischen, which separates Stollen and Zichenau. Once the Blue Zwischen moves through my territories, it then flows northwest and empties into the Baltic somewhere near Riga. Numerous smaller streams and rivers empty into the system.

The lay of the land in this forgotten corner of Europe is flat with low hills, numerous lakes, and large tracts of forest, consisting of spruces, aspens, birches, and the like. Winters can be quite cold with snow while summers are generally cool and damp, although heat waves are not unknown.

The names of the primary cities in the region are:

Grand Duchy of Stollen: Krankenstadt

Electorate of Zichenau: Hissig

Principality of Pillau-Zerbst: Schmitten

Principality of Pillau-Reuss: Schneiden

Principality of Tauroggen-Fiebus: Doppig

Principality of Werben-Steinau: Paastaaelig

Zeller-Schwartzekatz: Lustig

***Those of you with a linguistic background might recognize some of these words with which I’m playing!

Comments

It's Early Days Yet. . .

M aking some early progress with Batch A of the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment over the last several days/evenings. Nothing terribly exciting just yet, but the basic black, brown, and flesh areas are done as are the green bases, and gray undercoat. The latter two areas needed some careful retouching early in the week. Next up, the neck stocks. I might just do these in red for the enlisted men although some of my source material suggest they were black, but I always look for an excuse to shake things up a bit. Any errant splotches of red (or black) can be covered with another application of light gray before I move onto the next step. "Giddy up!" as one Cosmo Kramer might have said. -- Stokes

A Little More Brushwork. . .

A little more brushwork on the first batch of (my version of) the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment yesterday (Saturday). Taking a different tack this time and addressing many of the details first before the white coats and other larger areas of uniform. The eagle-eyed among you will notice that I've painted the (dark) red stocks of the enlisted men. Always a difficult and frustrating item to paint, it made sense to paint from the inside out as it were and get that particular detail out of the way first rather than try to paint it in later after much other painting has been accomplished. Trying to reduce the need for later retouching of other items on the figures you understand. Hopefully, I will be able to get back to these later today after a second trip back to the Apple Store for help with a couple of new iPad issues and, following the return home, some revision of Google Slides for tomorrow's meetings with my students. -- Stokes P.S. And according t...

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 Grand Duchy of Stollen

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