More Painting and Some Grand Ducal Misadventures to Follow. . .

Here's a fantastic view of the Minneapolis skyline from the old Stone Arch Bridge, which used to take passenger trains across the mighty Mississippi River, to and from the Great Northern Railway Station. My old apartment was about half a mile to the right of this photo. I used to walk, ride my bike, and sometimes ski across this bridge several times each week.

Well, Blogger still is not accepting/publishing my pasted in Word text. Hell and damnation! But anyway, where in the world did September go? It seems like I just turned around, and all of the sudden it's Fall! No matter, Autumn is my favorite time of the year with its crisp, chilly temperatures, and lovely colors.

And speaking of colors, please continue to watch this space over the next several days for further developments with the current crop of figures. Then, of course, there will be a few new developments in the continuing misadventures of the Grand Duke Irwin-Amadeus II and his English manservant Hives along with those grand ducal canines, the Portugese Water Dogs Max and Moritz.

From tomorrow, the fair Grand Duchess and I will be off to Minneapolis-St. Paul (our old stomping grounds -- Yea!!!) for a conference. And I'm taking along some writing materials too, so I will be able to catch up on some of the recently negleected Grand Duchy of Stollen campaign narrative. See you next week after our return!

Comments

Bluebear Jeff said…

Stokes,

I hope that you and your lovely Grand Duchess have a wonderful trip.

-- Jeff

2:23 PM

tradgardmastare said…

Enjoy!
best wishes
Alan

1:32 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...

Warboss Green Bases. . .

I t's amazing how something as simple as applying two coats of Citadel 'Warboss Green' (ex-Games Workshop 'Goblin Green') can enliven a unit of figures and get 'em that much closer to glossing and completion. In much the same way that applying fleshtone early in painting process helps bring the figures to life. Just some limited dry-brushing to bring out the manes, tails, and some equine musculature, and I'm calling my version of Saxony's von Polenz Cuirassiers, circa 1733, done and dusted. Longtime visitors to the Grand Duchy of Stollen might recall (the blog will turn 19 years old in September) that I generally go for an old school approach when it comes to unit bases and paint them a nice, bright green. Exceptions include command vignettes, skirmishers of one kind or another, transport, camp followers, and various other civilian one-offs. The approach is not to everyone's taste, but I like the cheery toy soldier appearance once everything...

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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