Just Enough Time to Draw a Breath. . .

The desk of an 18th century gentleman. I like the absence of a keyboard and computer screen although the three-cornered hat might take some getting used to.

Although summer vacation began for the Grand Duchess and I with the close of May Term last Friday, May 31st, things have been rather busy here at Stollen Central lately. Soldier painting has taken a backseat for a few weeks, and I've been hard at work churning out a couple of articles. Finished the first one this past weekend and sent it on to the parties concerned. Now, it's time to begin the next, a working draft of which must be done and sent off for consideration by midnight this Saturday the 8th. Whew!

And then there is the translation project. . .   which I plan to do during our upcoming three-week visit to Mexico since the publisher would, ideally, like it finished and submitted by July 1st. Keep in mind, I've been asking for months to have the materials forwarded to me and about a deadline, but it wasn't until very recently that I was sent the documents in the original language (Norwegian, of course), and almost as an afterthought, the July 1st date dropped in my lap. Why in the heck didn't they send me this stuff back in December or January like we discussed originally? So now, it looks very much like our vacation will be a working vacation of sorts. Isn't that the way?

No matter. It will still be nice to visit with good ol' Mom and enjoy the sounds of Spanish all around us in the city, delicious Yucatecan food, and trips to the coast for late lunches. And then there is the swimming pool at Mom and Step-Dad's home Casa de Mariposa. So, I suppose I shouldn't complain too loudly. We leave on June 11th and will be away until the end of the month. And by then, I should be seriously ready to paint some more figures.

Especially since the recently shared photographs over on the Fife & Drum Miniatures blog of French artillery by Minden Miniatures and some Valliere 4pdr. cannon by F&D have given me the itch once more to pick up a paintbrush. Haven't decided what I might tackle just yet, but there's plenty of time in the interim. And plenty of unpainted metal and plastic here in Zum Stollenkeller. Not like I need to purchase anymore of THAT for the time being. See you in a few weeks everyone!

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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