A Brief Painting Update. . .

Visions of different hussar uniforms and colors are filling my head at the moment as that recent order of 30 Minden Prussian hussars makes its way across the Atlantic to Stollen Central.

Mother and sister have been in town to visit the grandson/nephew, Young Master Paul, so socializing and family activities have assumed prominence in lieu of painting the last several days. However, they have now returned to their respective homes, leaving much more free time in the evenings once again. So, I stole away down here to Zum Stollenkeller last night for about 90 minutes of painting, applying dark brown and white paint respectively to all of the musket stocks and white sword knots on those 16 Huzzah musketeers. All that remains is to do the white button lace this evening, and then the painting is finished. If there is time, I might even make the big push and apply the usual two coats of Future/Klear, to impart a glossy, protective finish. And then it's onto the third and final batch! Watch for a photo update or two here in the next day or so. Chaaarge!!!

Comments

tradgardmastare said…

Go for it ...
Alan

1:06 PM

Martin said…

Hiya Stokes,

Glad to see that you're getting your painting mojo back! The Huzzah troopies are looking good, and I'll be looking forward to seeing what you can do with the Minden Hussars!

10:42 PM

Bluebear Jeff said…

Keep that paintbrush moving, Stokes . . . we want to see the finished unit.

-- Jeff

2:44 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...

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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