We're almost there. . .

Well, I managed to finish quite a bit in just two hours this evening as you can see in the photo: stirrup leathers, girths, holsters, blue coats, and the sword blades. Oh, and a few more selective black touch-ups to better define certain parts of the figures. All that remains now are the stirrups themselves plus the bronze bits on the scabbards, sword hilts/pommels, and silver bits on the bridles.

Other than a few black touch-ups on the horses, I hope to wrap these babies up by Saturday, when I will give the entire regiment of 30 a clear coat of Future floor polish, snap a photo or two for posting here, and then carefully pack the unit in a Rubbermaid plastic box, already waiting just out of sight on the painting desk. Ah, moving. . .

You’ll also notice that the ol’ painting desk is looking a bit Spartan these days. I got around to dismantling all of the radios, tuners, speakers, and assorted wires/cables last Saturday afternoon. I must say, I am enjoying the extra elbow room when I paint, so I might seriously consider a new table arrangement in Der Stollenkeller.

Tomorrow evening, we get a break and will see Love’s Labors Lost by William Shakespeare over on campus. The university student drama productions are usually of a very high quality, so we’re looking forward to it. And maybe back to some painting on Wednesday or Thursday evening? We’ll have to see. Now it’s off to dreamland gentlemen (and ladies). Sleep well!

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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