A Wargame Figure Painter's Things-to-Do List

Agh! It’s finally Friday, and I can’t do any painting! Life is so unfair sometimes. We have a couple with whom we are good friends coming over for wine, pizza, dessert, and good conversation this evening. All fine and dandy. The bad part is that I need to swiffer and vacuum the apartment plus clean the bathroom before they arrive at 7:00. If we didn’t actually LIKE this couple, I’d be more upset, but they are interesting and good company, so I guess it’s not too bad.

And then we’re going to Chicago early tomorrow for a day and dinner in the big city, so it’s unlikely that I’ll feel up to painting when we get home tomorrow night. I think the Grand Duchess must be involved in some sort of silent grand plot, along with other wargaming wives and girlfriends around the world, to keep me from finishing the Zichenauer infantry! Hmmm. . .

Sunday is November 11^th, Veterans’ Day (originally Armistice Day), the day on which general fighting ceased on the Western Front in 1918, and which is usually thought of as the beginning of the end to WWI, at least as history is taught here in the USA.

I always think of my maternal grandfather on this day. He was a paratrooper during WWII (13th Airborne Division), a tall, handsome, fair-haired North Carolina boy, who was drafted almost immediately after the

entered WWII. Luckily, he saw no combat and survived to come home and start a family with my grandmother. His two brothers and three brothers-in-law also made it home relatively unscathed. Pretty amazing when you think about it. We didn’t always see eye to eye on everything, but as an adult, I often ask myself how he would have handled various situations that come up in everyday life. He was quite a guy.

Finally, the 30 Spencer Smith cavalry figures, in the classic charge pose, are waiting for their basecoat of artists’ acrylic gesso as you know already. I just have to finish the Zichenauers first. Let’s see, we have about a month and a half of 2007 left, and I’d also like to paint a two-gun battery of artillery with 13 crew, General Phillipe de Latté and his two staff -- you’ve seen them lurking unpainted in many photos for the last several months -- and two medieval bell tents from Magister Militum, which arrived last March.

The question naturally begs, can I actually do it? Well, you never know unless you try, right? Or, as an old Pennsylvania lottery commercial used to say in the early 80s, “You’ve gotta play to win!” So, I think I’ll make a painting challenge to myself, and see if I can get all of this “stuff” finished by December 31^st. If I am unable to meet the challenge, you Grand Duchy of Stollen regulars receive full crowing and cajoling rights up to and including actual mockery and derision. Hopefully, that won’t be necessary though. ;-) Happy Weekend everyone!

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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