Skip to main content

Painting Continues Apiece at Stollen Central. . .

Found about ninety minutes before dinner early yesterday evening to wrap up work on those 13 Garrison Prussian artillery crew, which now look rather dashing if I do say so myself. All that remains is my usual varnishing step, i.e. two coats of Future/Klear acrylic floor finish. Afterwards, it's time to paint those two Holger Eriksson Charles XIIth guns for the crew to, um, crew, and then we're all finished. Tune in then for a photo update or two.

In the meantime, it's almost time to think about that next 60-figure unit of infantry, and I'm leaning strongly toward those Huzzah Miniature Prussians, sold to me at a very reasonable rate by Jim "Alte Fritz" Purky in the summer of 2008. These figures are reminiscent of the classic Spencer Smith musketeer with the musket on his left shoulder, but the sculpting and detail is much better. I hope Ian Marsh in the U.K. continues adding to the range because they are very nice figures and competitively priced.

Ok, the Grand Duchess and I are attempting to balance some skiing with baby duties today, so it's time to go and find my X-country/Nordic ski gear. It's a perfect day for getting outside. Cold, sunny, not much wind, and powdery snow. Shuuuuuush!


Later. . .

Be sure to have a look at the following new blog, which features lots of well-painted mid-18th Century RSM95 and Hinchliffe figures along with nicely turned out games and scenery. There is even a Mollwitz refight coming up later in the month! The link in my " Links" section at lower right is entitled Independent Wargames Group, or you can simply click here: Independent Wargames Group. Don't forget to leave plenty of comments for Rob, and tell him who sent you!

Comments

Bluebear Jeff said…
*sigh* . . . prediction here is for over 2" of rain in the next 24 hours.

Enjoy your skiing!


-- Jeff
Jim Wright said…
Hi Stokes,

Well, it is a "miserable" 70 F here. Overcast, with a chance of full sunshine.

Yeah, I know. Check back anytime from June through October for local baking times.

Thanks for the continued inspiration.

Jim
Bloggerator said…
Looking forward to the Charles XII guns, Stokes - I've been considering buying some myself.

Greg
guy said…
Hi Stokes,

First thanks for that link. Secondly just noticed on the PSR site that Zvesda have announced their forthcoming sets and one is described as 'Black Hussars'. PLease please be what I think it should be!! I managed to scrounge some Revell hussars last year but I'm sure another regiment will not go amiss.

Guy

Popular posts from this blog

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