Look who's been hard at work in the palace kitchens!

Yes, the Grand Duchess Sonja has been hard at work in the palace kitchens today, supervising this year’s batch of authentic Dresdner Stollen, to be dispatched to troops near and far in the coming weeks. I can assure you that it’s as good as it looks, and I’ll need to do some extra bicycling to stay trim during the coming Christmas season.

On a different note, Zichenau’s 80-figure Ermland Garde zu Fuß regiment is almost finished. The two steps remaining are the silver musket barrels/bayonets and the brass/bronze hoops that hold the musket barrels to the wooden stocks. Hopefully, by this time tomorrow they’ll be all done. Photos will follow right here.

From left to right: Major Paulo Biscotti, General Phillip de Latté, and Colonel Franz von Gherkin

In the meantime, I finished undercoating, and painting the faces of the Zichenauer general staff. Gentlemen, meet Major Biscotti, General de Latté, and Colonel von Gherkin. The Major is on loan to Zichenau from the Venetian army, General de Latté is, as you know already, a mercenary-adventurer from France, who is the sometimes lover of Zichenau’s Princess Antonia. Currently, though, he has been linked to Princess Valerie of Pillau-Zerbst as well. Finally, we have Colonel von Gherkin, from an obscure Austro-German family, known for their prolific cabbage farming.

I'm taking a small breather by painting these three miniatures, so I don't lose my "painting mojo"! Besides, Zichenau's growing forces need a few commanding officers. I'll next embark on the 30-figure Spencer Smith cavalry regiment, waiting patiently over on the painting desk -- Zichenau's Garde zu Pferd. Please see previous postings for uniform particulars, and stay tuned right here for further painting developments.

Comments

Bluebear Jeff said…

The stollen looks delicious . . . you are a very lucky man to have the Grand Duchess in your kitchen.

Enjoy the Holidays!

-- Jeff

6:19 AM

tradgardmastare said…

My forebears hail from Germany - any chance of the Grand Duchess sharing her recipe with me ? I would be very pleased indeed.
Many thanks

11:12 AM

tradgardmastare said…

I await the general staff with bated breath and am sure they will look great painted!

11:28 AM

old-tidders said…

Nice looking stollen 'cake'

Looking forward to seeing the finished general staff

-- Allan

7:03 AM

old-tidders said…

Nice looking stollen 'cake'

Looking forward to seeing the finished general staff

-- Allan

7:03 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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