It's the first day of winter. . . Happy Solstice!

Yet another Victorian-era image of Santa Claus/ Father Christmas, this time in red with a sprig of holly, one of spruce, and a pack of toys and assorted goodies for the little ones on his back.

Little of great consequence to report today. Finished the black bits on those current ten figures lats night. This afternoon and evening it's the two-part process on the coats. During breakfast today, I introduced Young Master Paul to a slice of his mother's stollen, which he quickly consumed and then asked for more. Good boy. Can the requisite mug of fresh, strong coffee be far behind? Not, I fear, if we want the Young Master to sleep again before 2020!

Later, I ran a couple of final errands to assist Santa Claus midday and returned in time for a pre-Christmas walk around the neighborhood with the Grand Duchess and the Young Master, who insisted on climbing the stars to the second floor by himself this morning. It's amazing how quickly language development and various motor skills come at this age.

No snow yet here in the Grand Duchy, but the day is seasonably chilly, dark, and damp, very like the two weeks when I visited my mother and stepfather in Southampton, England for the Christmas-New Year's period where Step-Dad was a misplaced Welshman and lecturer in International Relations at the University of Southampton at the time. And although it's been almost 25 years since that trip, its fun, warmth, and delightful experiences are always vivid in my mind come late December. Almost as if it were only yesterday. Sigh. I can't help be feel jolly and full of good cheer at this time of year.

And here is a Norwegian julenisse, enjoying his traditional bowl of porridge on Christmas Eve. In Norway, it is this nisse who brings toys to the children, but you must remember to leave a bowl of porridge in the barn for him otherwise misfortune will befall your farm in the coming year. The tomte is a very similar figure in neighboring Sweden.

The 6th (Luebecker Musketeers) Regiment of Infantry with steps two and three completed.

Comments

Giles said…

Good luck with your painting over the Christmas holiday, Stokes. I hope any forthcoming snow doesn't create any major problems! (Here in England the slightest flutter causes instant chaos and government meltdown.)

Best seasonal wishes

Giles

3:27 AM

tidders2 said…

Happy solstice day !

Your new boys are coming along nicely

-- Allan

5:35 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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