Command Vignettes Phase II. . .

More Minden Prussians, Austrians, Fife & Drum, and RSM95 officers along with a couple of large French 4pdrs also by Fife & Drum.

Alrighty then. Time to overcome the summertime, post-vacation lethargy and get my you-know-what back to the painting desk this evening for two hours, following supper and the Young Master's bedtime. On tap for the planned painting session, a basecoat of white artists' acrylic gesso for the Fife & Drum cannon in the forefront and a start on detailing the Prussian cuirassier and dragoon officers at the far left of the photograph.

Once these have been completed, during the next several days I hope, I'll begin working methodically through the vignettes of Prussian and AWI officers in the middle row before moving on to the Austrians and blacksmith vignette in the rear row. I've decided to paint at least some of the Austrians as Polish-Saxon officers in red or crimson, you know, just to keep things interesting and moving forward. This should take me well into August and the start of yet another academic year. Sigh.

The two out-of-focus packets that you might notice to the left of the bottles and tines of paints in the far rear of today's picture contain Minden laborers and French artillery crew, all of whom are destined to be painted as a large company of generic sappers/miners/pontooniers, augmented with a few civilians, who will serve either the Stollenian, or Zichenauer army as necessary. These are the planned project for September and October, once things have calmed down a few weeks into autumn semester. By that time, I will hopefully have begged and cajoled some of the new Fife & Drum powder and pontoon wagons, along with horse teams and drivers, from my wife, the Grand Duchess, for the approaching 29th birthday ;-), which should take us into the Christmas and New Year's period, barring any unforeseen developments.

Then, it might be time to add another large unit of infantry of cavalry, currently gathering dust in the pile of lead and plastic here in Zum Stollenkeller. I'm also keeping a close and careful eye on the planned development of those Hessians by Fife & Drum. If they resemble SYW Prussians closely enough once greens have been made and some preliminary photographs appear, I know where future regiments of infantry will be recruited. In the meantime, I've got enough unpainted RSM95 Prussians hanging around for two 60-figure regiments of infantry. These require painting in the next year or so.

And finally, there is a solo game to plan and play through during the two weeks in early August when the Grand Duchess and Young Master journey westward for two weeks to visit the other set of grandparents, leaving yours truly to my own devices for a glorious 13 days or so of unstructured, personal time for reading, painting, movie viewing, and listening to the radio. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Enough palaver. . . To the brushes comrades!

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...

Warboss Green Bases. . .

I t's amazing how something as simple as applying two coats of Citadel 'Warboss Green' (ex-Games Workshop 'Goblin Green') can enliven a unit of figures and get 'em that much closer to glossing and completion. In much the same way that applying fleshtone early in painting process helps bring the figures to life. Just some limited dry-brushing to bring out the manes, tails, and some equine musculature, and I'm calling my version of Saxony's von Polenz Cuirassiers, circa 1733, done and dusted. Longtime visitors to the Grand Duchy of Stollen might recall (the blog will turn 19 years old in September) that I generally go for an old school approach when it comes to unit bases and paint them a nice, bright green. Exceptions include command vignettes, skirmishers of one kind or another, transport, camp followers, and various other civilian one-offs. The approach is not to everyone's taste, but I like the cheery toy soldier appearance once everything...

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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