Painting Progress This Week. . .

Where we stand currently with the Eureka Musicians, Greyhounds, and so forth.

Snatching a few minutes here and there, wherever possible, this week for painting. And I even just played hooky from reading and grading student papers last night to paint for about 90 minutes, which was a very pleasant change of pace. Two of my three courses are "writing intensive" this term, so there is another stack of papers to read, comment on, and grade every time I turn around.

Anyway, you can see where things stand as of last night in the photo above. So far, so good though I wish the facial expressions of the musicians were not quite so exaggerated and "pulpy." But otherwise, nice figures that are a real change of pace. Just what I needed. Painting so far has been with very thin oil washes on the larger areas and very thin acrylic washes for the smaller details, to keep everything translucent and permit the white undercoat to play a role in the overall look of the figures. The wigs were done, however, with a thin coat of tan and then heavy dry-brushing until things looked about right. Hard to keep the white off the shoulders of the crimson jackets!

Next up, the remaining instruments, bows, and wooden parts of the chairs. If the mood strikes, me I might have a go at adding crimson stripes to the light blue upholstery. We'll see.

Comments

Steve-the-Wargamer said…

I like the wood effect on the harpsichord... very nice...

6:51 AM

WSTKS-FM Worldwide said…

Thanks Steve! I used a wash of Winsor&Newton Burnt Sienna to achieve (I think) that lovely honey brown that many high quality musical instruments acquire with time. I'll try the same for the violins and cello. Keep your fingers crossed!

Best Regards,

Stokes

3:30 PM

tidders2 said…

coming along nicely

-- Allan

6:49 AM

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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