It was just one of those evenings. . .

Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later. Yes, that’s right. . . I tipped over my open tin of Humbrol British Rifle Green last night. %%$&^*#amp;^*#!!! My work area really was a sea of green for a little while.

However, my mind remained clear, and I resolved to use the pool of green paint as my reservoir and simply continued painting until all coat tail turnbacks were finished. This took a couple of hours, so collars will be completed this evening.

I still have a little paint left in the tin, but I imagine it won’t be long before that dries up. It’s a little sad because I’ve had this tin of paint since purchasing it at MiniFigs HQ in Southampton in December 1988! Funny how one hangs onto certain sentimental memories, isn't it?

On a happier note, thank you for your interest and kind words concerning my upcoming musical venture. In fact, I met with the guy who will become our lead guitarist last night. He plays extremely well in that bluesy Clapton/Page style and will work well for this kind of project I think. So, I've got a drummer, a rockin' lead guitarist, and myself on bass and vocals. All we need now is a second guitarist, and we're ready to go.

Yes, indeed, the music covered will consist of artists like Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Bill Hailey, Eddie Cochran, Gene Vincent, and the like plus a few more obscure numbers from the era too. This should be lots of fun. It's something I've wanted to do for the last decade and a half, but various degree programs, studying, and learning languages always seemed to get in the way. No longer!

Back on the soldier front, rest assured that photos of the troops in question are coming just as soon as there is a bit more to see besides flesh tone and very dark green against a black undercoat. They really aren’t much to look at just yet. ;-)

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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