A Truly Wonderful Day. . .

Today has been a day of simple pleasures. A few inches of snow remain on the ground outside, making everything look and feel like many of us think December should here in the Northern hemisphere. We slept late since it’s Saturday, and then I made us a big breakfast to celebrate the end of the academic term. We’ve listened to different kinds of popular and classical Christmas music on the stereo all day while Sonja prepared some goodies for a small party we’re having this evening.

Meanwhile, I worked a bit more on preparing the Spencer Smith cavalry for basecoating and painting. Still have about dozen to do, but here’s a photo of those who are ready and on their cardboard bases to prevent them toppling over constantly. My painting area is beginning to look like the cover of Charles Grant Sr.’s The War Game, and that’s not a bad thing here in the Grand Duchy of Stollen!

Comments

Fitz-Badger said…

As someone who has not seen the Spencer Smiths in person it's interesting to see how non-detailed they look in bare metal, especially in light of all the great pictures of painted ones I've seen. It increases my respect for those of you achieving such wonderful and even detailed-looking paint jobs!

(and you don't have to deal with the issue of what to do with separate riders and mounts! lol)

7:06 PM

tradgardmastare said…

Sounds a super day - often the simplest are the best! I look forward to charting the painting progession on the Blog.

9:22 AM

Bluebear Jeff said…

Ooh, I sounds like a wonderful day . . . hope the evening gathering goes as well.

I'm up very early (for me) and it seems like we got an unexpected dusting of snow overnight. Should be a nice day today here too.

-- Jeff

9:41 AM

Anonymous said…

Are these miscasts?

3:32 PM

WSTKS-FM Worldwide said…

Hi Peter,

Nope, so far as I know these are not miscasts. Spencer Smith figures do not have the high level of detail that we have become used to with modern lines like Old Glory or Foundry for example. They are rather more stylized in form, leaving painters free to add or leave out as much detail as they would like.

What is especially attractive about SSM figures is that their proportions are correct -- no tree stump legs, baseball mit hands, pumpkin-sized heads, or deep, craggy folds in garments. Instead, you have figures that look like miniature people and horses. Frankly, that's what I'm after with this project.

Best Regards,

Stokes

5:24 PM

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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