Skip to main content

A Bit of Painting Progress at Stollen Central. . .

A few hours of uninterrupted painting yesterday (Sunday) mean that only the red turn-backs, facings, and shoulder straps remain before the third and final company of Huzzah Prussian musketeers (painted as Wurtemburgers) is finished! The company officer, NCO, and drummer are already finished and waiting to the rear, more or less in the middle distance of the picture in amongst some Holger Eriksson dragoons, RSM95 mounted officers, and a few Minden artillery crew. Thirteen Garrison artillery crew (next in the painting queue) are just out of sight to the right.


Nope, I have not dropped off the face of the earth! Just haven't had much to say here lately that I haven't said many times before, and free time for painting has been scarce since the start of the fall academic term. Teaching along with developing a new film course for Fall 2011 (or Winter 2012?) has eaten into normally free evening hours ravenously. And then, of course, there has been the parenting side of things, which really hasn't been too bad time and effort-wise as we approach Birthday #1!

Young Master Paul has become an amazing little boy in the last 11 months or so. Smiling up a storm, babbling to us and himself, clapping his hands, laughing at private jokes, scooting around on the floor, "Dada" was his first word and remains a favorite, etc., etc. I find most aspects of parenthood to be far more pleasurable than I would have thought a year ago. Who woulda thunk it? But I digress.

Back to the soldiering. I made myself take some time off late yesterday afternoon and following dinner for some relaxing painting down here in Zum Stollenkeller. And it was wonderful! The paint flowed almost effortlessly, and completing a just few small details seemed to make the final sixteen figures come alive. Go figure! Next up, I'll be seeing red as I work to finish the figures this week before the Grand Duchess flies to a conference on Thursday, leaving the men at home to hold down the fort. That means, of course, that it will be a busier than usual few days for me as I care for Young Master Paul solo, but the evenings will be free for painting after his bedtime. I only hope I won't be too fatigued to contemplate picking up a paintbrush. We'll see I guess.

On a totally unconnected note, I'm taking the Grand Duchess to see the B52's here in town on Wednesday evening. THAT should be lots of fun! Don't usually get too many big name rock acts in our neck of the woods, so we can't wait. Love shack baby!


And here is a close-up of one figure from the company in question. The paint just seemed to go onto the sword knots, white straps, and muskets by itself yesterday. Or perhaps it was single-mindedness? Still, we're just about there. Whew!

Comments

"Bring me my rock lobster outfit, Hives!" :o))
Bluebear Jeff said…
Very good progress, Sir Stokes.


-- Jeff
tradgardmastare said…
Good to hear news of the Duchy- enjoy the fifty twos!

Alan
Fitz-Badger said…
@ Steve: LOL
B-52s should be a fun concert. :)

The troops are looking good!
Bloggerator said…
Welcome back Stokes.

Emjoy la Shaque d'Amour!

Greg

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