Absent Without Leave!

Well, I’ve been errant and remiss in not adding any posts for the last week or so. Please don't cane me Sir! I was led astray! However, I’ve got a good excuse -- I’ve been hard at work writing an article, which, if the wargaming gods are kind, will soon appear for public consumption. More on this as events unfold. ;-)

Otherwise, I’ve been able to get a bit of painting and varnishing in. Stollen’s Jaegers zu Fuss are now entirely finished, right down to the shiny coat of Future acrylic floor finish. I must admit that I really like the old fashioned “look” brought to my figures by a glossy protective coat. I’ve also started doing the same for the 2^nd (Von Laurenz) Musketeers, which were completed (painting) in early September.

The gloss finish on these early regiments also seems to make the various colors richer, so I think I'm going to stay with this method of protecting my brushwork for a while! Finally off of their temporary bases and lined up in mass, the musketeers and jaeger look really impressive. I’m borrowing a digital camera this weekend and will hopefully have a bunch of photos to post right here next week. Thanks for your continued patience though.

On that note, a special thank you to Jeff Hudelson, the Prince of Saxe-Bearstein, for providing me with all kinds of useful information about digital cameras, batteries, macro photography, and such. If Santa Claus does not come through, I'll be watching the post-Christmas sales very closely.

Finally, the coast looks clear for some extra painting this coming weekend. My wife is visiting her sister in Cincinnati, so it will be me and the kitty here by ourselves. If Rannveig does not spend too much time meowing for attention and her Fancy Feast catfood, I’ll be able to make up for some lost hours the last couple of weeks. I’m going to try to make a real dent in the two-gun battery of artillery and crew that’s been sitting on my painting table since late October. Let’s see how far I can get with 13 figures and two cannon. Stay tuned.

Comments

Bluebear Jeff said…

Stokes,

First, thank you for the kudus, but I was just trying to help.

Looking forward to seeing those photos.

-- Jeff

1:51 AM

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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