Revell Austrian Grenadiers on the Starting Block!!!

Recruiting has been picking up in the Electorate of Zichenau the last few evenings! The 80 figure (Von Ermland) Garde Granadiere have had their mold lines trimmed away and now await a coating of artist’s acrylic gesso, followed by a black undercoat.

The 1/72 Revell SYW Austrian grenadiers were a pleasure with only light mold lines/flash on most figures. And I might possibly be getting just a bit better at working with plastic figures, because the trimming went easily and quickly this time -- I was able to get about 20 figures finished per evening. Amazing what a sharp X-acto blade will do!

Organizationally, Zichenau infantry units are a bit larger than their Stollenian counterparts. The Von Ermland Grenadiers comprise four companies of nineteen figures each plus staff of four (mounted colonel, adjutant, standard bearer, and RSM) for a total of 80 figures. As I mentioned here a few days ago, I’m hoping the mainly white uniforms will mean that the painting process proceeds with great precipitance. ;-) We’ll see, I guess, but I do want to get on to that lovely Spencer Smith cavalry that the Grand Duchess brought home with her from Europe before too long.

Anyway, since the projected Zichenauen army is somewhat smaller than Stollen’s, I felt that their guard and line regiments could stand to be a bit larger than the usual three company establishment of the infantry regiments I’ve been painting for the last year or so. Light infantry battalions will stand firm at a two company establishment, just like the Grand Duchy of Stollen’s green-coated Jäger zu Fuß that I painted during October 2006.

Finally, I hope to get a photo of the entire regiment posted here once they have been covered with gesso and a back undercoat. In the meantime, “Charge!!!”

Comments

Bluebear Jeff said…

I'm sure that we all look forward to seeing the completion of this unit . . . not only for the pictures, but also so that we can see the Spencer Smiths in uniforms too.

-- Jeff

4:28 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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