Merry Christmas from the Grand Duchy of Stollen!!!

Today's first seasonal illustration is of Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, and their family at Christmas time. A suitably cheery image for Christmas Eve, I think. The second picture, at the bottom of this entry, is also from the Victorian era, but a little later in the period from the look of it. Very different from that above, but I like it too, and I hope you enjoy it.

Things have been very busy the last few days here at Stollen Central. Very little of it has to do with wargaming and painting toy soldiers I'm afraid. Still, we have had time for some walks, coffee at a nearby cafe, and late-night glasses of eggnog with nutmeg sprinkled on it, or a couple of Clementines. It's been a wonderful way to slow down a bit and usher in the long Christmas weekend.

The pre-Christmas festivities notwithstanding, however, I did manage to get in a couple of hours at the painting desk very late last night. I'm almost finished with the white coats, breeches, vests, and gaiters on the remaining dozen figures of the first comapnay of Flickenhoffer's Fusiliers, the final regiment (80 figures strong) in the Electorate of Zichenau's army. Drop by in a couple of days for a photo update or two.

In closing, I'd just like to thank those of you who have already sent your Christmas greetings either to the blog, or via e-mail. It's lovely to hear from friends and acquaintances like you around the world. Tomorrow, I'll take a break from the blog and spend the day with the Grand Duchess. We are planning on visiting a local Lutheran church this evening, which features a candle light service and singing late this evening at 11pm. We are also, I believe, asking a friend, who has no family in this country, to Christmas dinner tomorrow evening, so that she won't be all alone tomorrow. So, it's a full schedule for the next 36 hours or so. But rest assured, I'll be back come Friday.

In the meantime, let me wish the compliments of the season to one and all from the Grand Duke Irwin-Amadeus II and the love of his life, the Grand Duchess Sonja. Wherever in the world you might find yourself, may your Christmas Day be filled with friends, family, good cheer, and perhaps also a few minutes to reflect on your good fortune and the more pleasant moments of life. Merry Christmas!

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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