Skip to main content

Poco a poco. . .

The bows and stringed instruments are painted, but need 18 hours or so to dry to the touch.  Professor Detrius and Irwin-Amadeus II, both very nattily turned out themselves, look on.  Detrius, now that I think about it, resembles the young Robert Plant onstage, ca. 1969, or '70.  Can't you envision a microphone on his outstretched hand?  Or maybe I'm just dazed and confused?  That's what happens when the emotional levee breaks.  Complete and utter communication breakdown.

As Spanish speakers say, or "Little by little."  A delightful couple of hours spent at the painting desk this morning and midday while the Grand Duchess and the Young Master ran errands and visited the local Children's Museum ( a current favorite).  So, the house was delightfully quiet and still.  Perfect painting weather too.  Cold and gray outside, not enough snow for skiing or anything else.  A guy couldn't ask for a better excuse to open up a few tubes paint, squeeze a few small dabs of oil-based pigment on the palette paper, and begin mixing in the Liquin.  Ah. . .

First off, the instruments played by the string quartet received a heavy wash of Grumbacher Light English Red, to approximate that lovely honey brown the old cellos and violins acquire when they have been played, loved, and maintained.  I also had a go at applying oil-based gold to the shoe buckles, which, when dry, will need a careful dash of Citadel black applied in the center, so that they do, in fact, resemble buckles rather than a misplaced blob of gold.  Then, it's simply a matter of trimming in a light brown onto the wood of chairs, a few touch-ups, and some select black or purple lining for added definition.  Voilas!  The musicians, greyhounds, and music stands will be all done.

I next turned my attention to the good Professor Detrius and the Grand Dukes, applying oil-based silver carefully to the former's buttons and the lace on his coat, using the Knoetel illustration below of Voltaie and Frederick II conversing outside Sans Souci as a guide.  Very careful lining with dark green and black followed to give the green coat added definition.  The same was done, using gold and dark brown, to ol' Irwin-Ami the Deuce along with touching up both of their white shirt cuffs and painting their respective neck stocks along with Detrius' gold shoe buckles.  And, ladies and gentlemen, I pronounce these two figures just about done save for their two coats of glossy varnish.

I also spent about 30 minutes tinkering with those Minden military laborers and French artillery crew that I'll mix together to create a company of a dozen pioneers/sappers.  These will be augmented by eight Minden civilian laborers.  These figures look great in the flesh, and, spurred on by what Jim Perky and Charles Grant have done with them n their own collections, I'm eager to get to press on with them.  However, I have had such a good time working on the Eureka musicians that I'll continue on the non-military thread, I think, and jump into that batch of Jackdaw aristocrats and servants before coming back to the pioneers/sappers.  Sometimes, when the the will to paint returns, you simply must let throw caution and planning to the wind and see where it takes you.


The aforementioned Knoetel plate that has informed my painting of Professor Detrius as seen in the photo at the top of this post.

Comments

Conrad Kinch said…
Your patience never ceases to astonish me.
A side effect of graduate school I fear.

Best Regards,

Stokes

Popular posts from this blog

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...