A Bright, Sunny, and Cool Fall Day. . .

The Indra Club on the Grossefreiheit in Hamburg, Germany, where the Beatles played for 48 consecutive nights, before the police closed it due to noise complaints, from August to early October 1960. The band then was moved up the street to the larger, wilder Kaiserkeller Club where they continued almost until being deported at the end of November that year.

Although I am (before Young Master Paul arrived two years ago that is) an avid Nordic skier (avid, but definitely not Olympic material by any stretch of the imagination) and enjoy the winter, Fall is my favorite season. Here in the Grand Duchy of Stollen, we have one of those incredibly blue days with cool temperatures, and the leaves are starting to change colors and fall from the trees. Ahhhh. . . Reminds me of when I was a child and teenager, growing up on my maternal grandparents' place in rural southeastern Pennsylvania about two hours outside Philadelphia.

Which is just a roundabout way of saying that I managed to get in a couple of hours of painting last night on the current batch of nine Minden hussars. They are starting to look like something though there is still much to do before they are all finished. I fear I might run out of Citadel (ex-Games Workshop) Goblin Green though, which is the color I usually apply to the bases of figures. Now that I think of it though, I do have a quart of Olympic Grassy Meadow, that I use on my tabletop and hills, which might be just the ticket if I thin it a bit with some water. We'll see how much painting I can complete this afternoon.

Tonight, however my amateur rock & roll band The Indras has yet another date (we've been averaging two-three gigs a month for the last 18 months or so). Click on the highlighted link to be transported magically to out website, which yours truly designed some months ago. The cold that all three of us have suffered with during the last three weeks here at Stollen Central finally seems to be all gone, so I should be able to manage Long Tall Sally and Kansas City/Hey, Hey, Hey pretty well tonight. But I digress.

Be sure to check back in here later today, or tomorrow for a hussar painting photographic update. Only three weeks to go until the November 5th Painting Challenge deadline. Will Stokes make it, or perish in the process with a paintbrush in his hand?

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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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