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!

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...

Basic Reds Done at Last. . .

S till quite a way to go with the current batch of 20 human figures and a horse (of course), but they're actually starting to look like something after all of the red distinctions. Quite a bit of painting in hour-long sessions the last week as and when time has allowed. Mostly applying the basic dark red to facing areas and turnbacks followed by the inevitable touch-ups to clean up wobbly edges and those misplaced, minute splotches of Citadel Khorne Red. They're looking like so many Austrian infantry regiments of the era at this point, but the eventual flags will turn them magically into the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment, more or less, of the AWI period. But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. One frustrating point (ahem) of sad discovery. I've started trying to use those Winsor & Newton 'Series Seven' brushes (#1 rounds) purchased last spring, and the blasted things simply will not keep a point. Very frustrating since I have heard over the y...

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

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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