A Few Scenic Items on the Way. . .

A group of the Grand Duke's cronies, enjoying social intercourse at the Brummen und Zummen. Strangely, there are no dinner rolls standing in as cricket balls in sight!

Ha! I just made a small order for some Foundery and Front Fank barrels, gabions, crates, trunks, sacks, and other paraphernalia with which to enliven my planned pioneer/sapper/miner/pontoonier vignettes. With any luck at all, those things should be here in a week or, right about the time I wrap up the musicians, dogs, and so forth. Now, if we are able to finish supper in enough time this evening, and I can get the Young Mast into bed without any unforeseen difficulties (ok, tantrums), I might be able to steal away back down here to Zum Stollenkeller for another round of painting and some much needed quiet time to myself. Cross your fingers!

Comments

Mad Padre said…

I notice the Grand Duke's portraitist on the floor, poised to capture a moment of greatness.

3:27 PM

WSTKS-FM Worldwide said…

Ah, but sadly, for Irwin-Amadeus II, those moments seem always just beyond reach.

Best Regards,

Stokes

8:41 PM

warpaintjj said…

I love vignettes - always a last on the list job but worth every penny and every second spent sorting them out. Looking forward to seeing all these extras soon.
JJ

PS the tantrum phase passes, I have three daughters so have observed this, the teenage years promise a whole new parental terror...

3:47 PM

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

Search This Blog