Christmas Trees for Jeff!

As requested a few days ago by Jeff Hudelson -- the Prince of Saxe-Bearstein -- here are a couple of quick photographs of the Christmas trees here at Stollen Central. I tried using no flash at first, but the pictures came out too dark for you to see anything, so flash it was. Still, you can see some of the little white lights, so it's not too bad.

The top photo is the 8' plus tall tree in the library at the front of the house, and the lower photo is the 31/2' tree to the side of the dining room table. This is the "family tree", which has mostly ornaments made by Sonja when she was a girl as well as a few decorations given to her through the years by her mother and father.

The taller tree is the "fancy tree", which has all kinds of shiny glass and metal ornaments on it as you can see. Just out of sight in this picture are the gifts already beneath this tree thanks to Sonja's mom and sister really getting on the ball admirably early this year and wrapping/sending things at the beginning of the month. Tomorrow, I'll get busy myself, wrap a few things for the Grand Duchess, and add those to those presents already under the tree. That way, we'll be able to enjoy "the look" of the thing (a nod to Charles Grant Sr. here) for a full week before Christmas Day.

We have about two inches of powdery snow outside and more is falling. I don't think we are to have quite enough to strap on the ol' cross country skis, but you can't argue that it sure makes the neighborhood beautiful. Why, I can almost hear those sleigh bells jinglin'!

Finally, I just had an unexpected phone call from an old, old friend in Pennsylvania a little while ago as he was driving home in the snow falling there. "Donny" and I go way back. We met on the first day of school when I was in first grade, and he was in second grade in 1973 and have stayed in touch all these years.

We used to work together in the 80s and early 90s and played together in a number of rock bands during that period. He played drums and sang while I played bass and sang. Ah, those were the days. So much hair and such small waistlines ago! ;-) Anyway, isn't it funny how hearing from an old friend out of the blue like that can brighten your spirits? Even when you already feel pretty good. Have a nice afternoon everyone.

It's Early Days Yet. . .

M aking some early progress with Batch A of the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment over the last several days/evenings. Nothing terribly exciting just yet, but the basic black, brown, and flesh areas are done as are the green bases, and gray undercoat. The latter two areas needed some careful retouching early in the week. Next up, the neck stocks. I might just do these in red for the enlisted men although some of my source material suggest they were black, but I always look for an excuse to shake things up a bit. Any errant splotches of red (or black) can be covered with another application of light gray before I move onto the next step. "Giddy up!" as one Cosmo Kramer might have said. -- Stokes

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 ...

A Little More Brushwork. . .

A little more brushwork on the first batch of (my version of) the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment yesterday (Saturday). Taking a different tack this time and addressing many of the details first before the white coats and other larger areas of uniform. The eagle-eyed among you will notice that I've painted the (dark) red stocks of the enlisted men. Always a difficult and frustrating item to paint, it made sense to paint from the inside out as it were and get that particular detail out of the way first rather than try to paint it in later after much other painting has been accomplished. Trying to reduce the need for later retouching of other items on the figures you understand. Hopefully, I will be able to get back to these later today after a second trip back to the Apple Store for help with a couple of new iPad issues and, following the return home, some revision of Google Slides for tomorrow's meetings with my students. -- Stokes P.S. And according t...

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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