Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Happy Thanksgiving to all American visitors to the Grand Duchy of Stollen wherever in the world you might find yourselves. We have a chilly, gray day with falling temperatures here in our neck of the Midwest, the Grand Duchess brought me a H-U-G-E mug of black coffee a short while ago as I yawned and woke up in bed, and we have over an hour until ol' Tom Turkey goes in to oven. Otherwise, it's still in the house at the moment, which is never a bad thing. Happy sigh. It's a good day. And I feel very fortunate indeed.

Between preparing a couple of pies yesterday along with another dish, which I can't quite recall at the moment, I managed to squeeze in a couple of hours work on those Garrison Miniatures Prussian artillery crew, who are actually looking much more like Schaumburg-Lippe artillery crew with their pretty, light blue uniforms. Not much left to do there except for a couple of tiny things, and then its onto my usual two coats of Future/Klear acrylic floor finish. I next must actually order a couple of RSM large guns from the Dayton Painting Consortium for the figures to crew and paint them once they arrive.

Even more exciting, I also began preparing some of those 30 Holger Eriksson dragoons that I purchased, via Peter Johnstone of Spencer Smith Miniatures, during the summer of 2009, for eventual base-coating in the next ten days or so. These are really wonderful little figures. A bit rough around the edges by modern sculpting and casting standards, but they will look mighty fine once painted and deployed on the table.

And since I've got so much blue, white, and red in my tabletop forces for the Grand Duchy of Stollen and its mortal enemy the Electorate of Zichenau already, I have more or less decided to base the uniform for this next batch of figures on that of Prussia's Trumbach Dragoons -- that is, dark green coats, breeches, and saddlecloths with yellow facings and lace. It should speed painting a bit, and I have checked my ancient tin of Humbrol British Rifle Green, which dates from late December 1988 when I purchased it from the old MiniFigs HQ on Graham Road in Southampton, the U.K. I think there is probably just enough solvent pigment left in the tin for one more regiment. Keep your fingers crossed!

So, there you have it. A fairly quiet couple of days here at Stollen Central, but some painting and culinary activity have kept things both interesting and productive. Ah! I see that my coffee needs refilling, so I'll bid you a fond farewell until your next visit the Grand Duchy of Stollen where the Christmas season is just getting underway. I wonder if the Grand Duke Irwin-Amadeus II will remember to purchase a gift for his long suffering manservant Hives this year?

It's Early Days Yet. . .

M aking some early progress with Batch A of the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment over the last several days/evenings. Nothing terribly exciting just yet, but the basic black, brown, and flesh areas are done as are the green bases, and gray undercoat. The latter two areas needed some careful retouching early in the week. Next up, the neck stocks. I might just do these in red for the enlisted men although some of my source material suggest they were black, but I always look for an excuse to shake things up a bit. Any errant splotches of red (or black) can be covered with another application of light gray before I move onto the next step. "Giddy up!" as one Cosmo Kramer might have said. -- Stokes

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 ...

The Eventual Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment. . .

The Anhalt-Zerbst regiment musters in the drill square to sort themselves into platoons and companies during the coming weeks Fall maneuvers if you will. A large dose of real life the last few days with the start of classes next Monday, various preparatory meetings, and finishing up a few other things this week. But, I managed to sort out 60 or so Minden Austrian infantry from the pile and get 'em stuck to temporary painting bases. Must carefully drill out the hands of several NCOs for flagpoles and pole arms this weekend before the usual basecoat. I'm thinking of mixing the usual white gesso with the usual light gray to kill two birds with one stone so to speak. Applying both base- and undercoat in one fell swoop as my grandmother used to say. In the meantime, the recently finished squadron of Saxon cuirassiers has been placed carefully in one of the clear acrylic boxes on my shelves until I have the suitable flag to affix. -- Sto...

Fitz-Badger said…

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours as well!
Things are cooking at my house as I write.

1:40 PM

Bluebear Jeff said…

A most heartfelt "Happy Thanksgiving" to your entire household (not forgetting your cat).

Here on Vancouver Island it just continues to snow. We've got almost 6" of the white stuff today and it just keeps snowing.

-- Jeff

5:54 PM

Capt Bill said…

All of Beerstein wishes you a Happy Thanksgiving...

6:20 PM

tidders2 said…

Happy thanksgiving

Gobble Gobble

-- Allan

9:18 AM