2012 Winds Down at the GD of S. . .

A mid-19th century Currier and Ives print. Where I grew up in southeastern Pennsylvania, there was a family nearby with a couple of ponies and a sleigh, which always came out whenever we had heavy snows, which were a regular occurrence in the 197os and first half of the 80s.

Well, 2012 is winding down quietly here at Stollen Central, and I can't seem to stoke (ha, ha) the painting fires, or get my rear end into the setting up mode, to resume Neu Sittangbad. The rest and relaxation of the last few weeks has simply been too much, I tell you, too much. I can't go on. Really, I can't!

Never fear, however. Somewhat more normal operations and procedure will resume here in Zum Stollenkeller in the next day or so as the 2012 Christmas Season fades into our memories. In the meantime, look for a retrospective of the year gone by right here on New Year's Eve.

And here's another seasonal Currier and Ives print. I went ice skating with the Grand Duchess (who enjoys speed skating, once. It was one of the scariest things I've experience. Ever.

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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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