A cheerful pre-Christmas quiet settles over the Grand Duchy of Stollen. . .

Here's another great old Christmas card from years gone by. I really like the green robes and purple hat of this particular St. Nick. Hmmmm. Green and purple. Might look good together on a future unit of infantry or cavalry!

Well, the Grand Duchess Sonja and I got a late start yesterday afternoon, but we managed to pick up the Christmas trees and decorate them last night. In fact, we sat up until almost 1am drinking egg nog and talking about this and that by the light of the trees and our Swedish Advent star that hands in the front window. Young Master Paul stirred at about 4:15 am and drifted easily back to sleep after a bottle and a change of diaper. But this time it's Dad who can't go back to sleep! I've been awake ever since, finally giving up the ghost and rising about an hour ago. And it's 6:50am on a Saturday, darn it!

So, what better way to start the day than with a quiet cup of fresh coffee and a bowl of oatmeal (porridge) while some light snow drifts down onto the ground outside. A final little bit of Christmas shopping later today and maybe a little painting time this evening. But the house is all ready for Christmas, the kitchen is well stocked, and life is pretty darn good, so I feel very lucky. And, if you'll pardon my straying into this, I guess it's important to remember those sorts of things at Christmastime because not everyone in the world is as fortunate.

Comments

ColCampbell50 said…

And let the congregation say "AMEN!! Brother."

Jim

10:31 AM

Mosstrooper said…

Amen indeed !

11:09 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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