A Quick Painting Update. . .

Well, the first free weekend in about three weeks! So, I spent a delightful day painting the second batch of Zichenauer infantry yesterday! Here’s a photograph I took early in the day after completing the crossbelts and red silk bags in the top in the bearskins. Pleased with the results, I continued in a few later sessions to apply the purple facing color and brown to haversacks, along with a different color of brown for what look like small pouches or canteens modeled on top of the haversacks.

If you look carefully,you'll just make out on a few of the figures here that light blue shoulder strap on their left shoulders. I decided that this is how I would differentiate between each of the four companies. The first has purple, the second light blue, the third will have yellow, and the fourth will have green shoulder straps. I decided on this because these figures have sprigs of pine in their hats rather than pompoms or cockades, so it is difficult to represent which company the figures belong to otherwise. All in all, a great day’s work on the heels of about 10 days of relative inactivity thanks to what we in the Grand Duchy of Stollen like to call “real life”!

Today, it's on to the purple breeches and officer/NCO wigs and the enlisted men's brown hair. Maybe the muskets stocks too, depending on how time goes. Must try to accomplish as much as possible in the next several days because the Grand Duchess and I have a big bike ride coming up next weekend in Bloomington, Indiana – the annual Hilly Hundred! Two days of hilly terrain with LOTS of other bicyclists from around the Midwest. My legs are aching already just thinking about it!

Finally, I managed to work out ow to use the zoom function of this digital camera that was a gift from dear old Mom and Step-dad last Christmas. The booklet that came with it is so thick that it is sometimes a bit intimidating to use all of the features. Imagine my surprise when I noticed while looking at the back of the camera that there was a button right in front of my face with a "zoom" symbol on it -- groan. The Grand Duchess will get a real kick out of this when I tell her!

Anyway, the zoom function enables you to get in even closer, filling the frame with your subject without throwing anything out of focus. It's scary, but I'm hearing that old Duran Duran song in my mind right now -- "See them walking hand in hand across the bridge at midnight. . ." Help me, help me, I'm having a Cool 80s Music Attack!

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...

Basic Reds Done at Last. . .

S till quite a way to go with the current batch of 20 human figures and a horse (of course), but they're actually starting to look like something after all of the red distinctions. Quite a bit of painting in hour-long sessions the last week as and when time has allowed. Mostly applying the basic dark red to facing areas and turnbacks followed by the inevitable touch-ups to clean up wobbly edges and those misplaced, minute splotches of Citadel Khorne Red. They're looking like so many Austrian infantry regiments of the era at this point, but the eventual flags will turn them magically into the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment, more or less, of the AWI period. But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. One frustrating point (ahem) of sad discovery. I've started trying to use those Winsor & Newton 'Series Seven' brushes (#1 rounds) purchased last spring, and the blasted things simply will not keep a point. Very frustrating since I have heard over the y...

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

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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