It's that time of year again. . .

A photograph of the pre-Christmas Weihnachtsmarkt in Muenster, Germany where the Grand Duchess spent a year as an undergraduate many moons ago. Difficult to see the actual market and associated festivities, yes, but the shot of all the great old townhouses was awfully difficult to resist.

A windy, cold, and snowy first day of Advent here at Stollen Central, but Young Master Paul and I bundled up anyway and made a trip out to run a few errands. None, sadly, that had anything to do with the Christmas season or preparations for it, but it still felt good to get out in the cold air, and Young Master Paul was as good as gold. Indeed, he seemed to enjoy himself as much as I did. And only two days of the university semester left! Then we are FREE (more or less) until after January 1st. And so, as Tiny Tim rightly observed, "Hurrah for Christmas! The best time of the year!"

Not too much to report on the soldier front other than that I have almost finished applying two coats of Future/Klear acrylic floor finish to those Garrison artillery crew. They look mighty good if I do say so myself, and I'll have a photo posted here in a day or two. The two related MiniFig cannon are all assembled and awaiting a basecoat as are the 30 Holger Eriksson dragoons. I've decided to dig out my Windsor-Newton alkyd paints to use on the latter.

Alkyd paints are similar to standard oil paints, exhibiting the same brilliance and durability, but they dry to the touch in 24 hours or less thanks to the pigment being mixed with an alkyd medium instead of linseed or poppy oil for example. Anyway, I've made the momentous decision to basecoat the HE figures in white, at least for the horses, and then apply thin washes of various browns and greys over the white in a kind of glazing technique. I might even convince myself to add some black lining for added definition as I complete the figures. Peter Gilder would be pleased I think. We'll see how it goes, but it seems only right that these truly old school figures get a different treatment than my usual GW acrylic hobby paints treatment.

Well, that's about all for now. I feel as giddy as a schoolboy this afternoon and could babble on and on about nothing in particular for quite some time before conking out and collapsing onto the bed for a late afternoon nap, so it seems like a good idea to quit while I'm ahead. ;-) Be sure to tune in tomorrow for another seasonal scene along with more related soldier and painting chatter!

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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