A Bit More Hussar Progress. . .

I played hooky from grading student papers this evening so that I could paint. And you know what? My conscience doesn’t hurt me one bit!

So, here are three picture updates of the first squadron and regimental staff. If you look very closely, you’ll see the crimson breeches peeking out from under the blue dolman and pelisse combo and as yet still black “schwaraden”, the leggings that came up to the mid-thigh. I think I might paint these yellow just to brighten things up a bit.

I also did the white base on the plumes plus the silver sabers and bronze trumpet. So, these fellows are beginning to look a bit more like soldiers and less like small hunks of plastic with black gesso all over them! And now, it’s beddy-bye. My neck and shoulders demand it. Sleep well, men!

Comments

CWT said…

An impressive regiment is shaping up. I especially like your painting on the horses - something I always struggle with.

C

12:49 AM

A J said…

Painting cavalry has always been my bugbear job too. You're doing a fine job there, Stokes. I look forward to seeing them in their final glory.

8:27 AM

Conrad Kinch said…

Onward hussars! I always find it very hard to motivate myself when painting cavalry, they just take so damn long. I'm considering brown spray for my next bunch and then pinning the chaps on later.

May I recommend some Hussar related reading?

The Point Of Honor by Joseph Conrad
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/17620
http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/the-point-of-honor-by-joseph-conrad.xml (audiobook version)

9:44 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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