We're about to get just a bit bigger here at the Grand Duchy of Stollen. . .

Meet the new Grand Ducal Felines. . . yes, felines. . . Princess Gunnlaug (left) and her brother Prince Onyx (right).

The Grand Duchess, Young Master Paul, and I made a vital journey midday Thursday to meet our new kittens for the first time at the 2nd Chance for Pets Animal Shelter 30 minutes away from home. Absolutely lovely, sweet, calm kitties, who like to be held and cuddle together in you arms or an available lap. As you can tell from their respective expressions, Gunnlaug at left is the more relaxed of the two while her brother is a bit more apprehensive. Young Master Paul was curious, full of smiles, and patted Onyx on the head very gently before having his attention diverted by a little Shizu dog that was milling around the outter office of the shelter.

Now, you can blame the Grand Duchess for our switching oars midstream to adopt both kittens. Normally more a dog person, she felt it would be better for Gunnlaug to have a friend, and when we learned that the kitten had a sibling with whom she was especially close. . . Well, we couldn't just adopt one and leave the other, could we? So, in another six or seven days, following the Royal Neutering of Prince Onyx (he'll never forgive me, I'm sure), we'll get to bring them home and get them accustomed to things here at Stollen Central.

Meanwhile, I'm just about finished with the battalion staff group for the Eyczing-Csiklos Panduren, so look for some better photos of them arrayed in a quiet corner of the wargaming table tomorrow. And then there is the ongoing Battle for Neu Sittangbad to resume too. Oh, my dear General de Latte? Where for art thou?

Comments

Bluebear Jeff said…

We have a very sweet all-black female feline named "Shasha" from the local SPCA.

Like your kitties, even her whiskers are black. But unlike Gunnlaug (and perhaps Prince Onys), Shasha has no white on her . . . but she has peridot green eyes and a very pink tongue.

I hope that you get to enjoy your new cats as much as we enjoy Shasha.

-- Jeff

4:16 PM

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 ...

A Little More Brushwork. . .

A little more brushwork on the first batch of (my version of) the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment yesterday (Saturday). Taking a different tack this time and addressing many of the details first before the white coats and other larger areas of uniform. The eagle-eyed among you will notice that I've painted the (dark) red stocks of the enlisted men. Always a difficult and frustrating item to paint, it made sense to paint from the inside out as it were and get that particular detail out of the way first rather than try to paint it in later after much other painting has been accomplished. Trying to reduce the need for later retouching of other items on the figures you understand. Hopefully, I will be able to get back to these later today after a second trip back to the Apple Store for help with a couple of new iPad issues and, following the return home, some revision of Google Slides for tomorrow's meetings with my students. -- Stokes P.S. And according t...

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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