News Flash: First Batch of Dragoons Are Finished!!!

OK, here you are ladies and gentlemen! Squadron A and the regimental staff of the 4th (Trakehnen) Dragoons. All finished and ready for your viewing pleasure. Painting time for the 12 figures pictured -- about two weeks (at a leisurely pace).

For those of you who are interested, here's the technical information:

Basecoat: Liquitex acrylic gesso -- white

Undercoat: Liquitex acrylic paint-- black

Paints: Mostly Games Workshop augmented by Ral Partha, Poly S, and Grumbacher (artist's oil colors)

Brushes: Cotman (Windsor&Newton) synthetic bristles #3 (for bulk of painting), Cotman #2 for horses, Leow #001 for detail work, and a Liquitex#3/0 Sable Spotter for tiny details. I've actually had the sable bristle brush since the early 90s. Amazing how long a good brush will last with reasonable use and care.

Varnish: Future Acrylic Floor Polish (not yet completed -- I'll do all 30 figures when the entire regiment is finished)

The second batch of nine figures -- Squadron B -- should go a bit quicker. My wife has a faculty meeting and choir practice Monday evening, so I will be able to make some good headway tomorrow before she returns, and we enjoy dinner together. I'm hoping to finish the entire regiment in the next two weeks. Keep your fingers crossed!

Comments

marinergrim said…

Nice work as always. I do like the horses.

2:12 AM

Giles said…

Very nice work Stokes. 12 cavalry in 2 weeks is pretty good going I think!

Giles

8:45 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

Search This Blog