A Little Sunday Painting in Zum Stollenkeller. . .

Blobs of color on the piece of palette paper above include Prussian Blue, Yellow Ochre, Flesh Tone, Burnt Umber, Burnt Sienna, Black, and Sap Green.

A spot of painting here in Zum Stollenkeller this afternoon. The usual oils and alkyd oils thinned with Liquin Original, so the air is subtly fragrant with that delightful aroma of pigment and the vehicles in which it has been suspended. Among the four individually based figures currently under the brush include Banastre Tarleton and Francis Marion by Fife & Drum. Eagerly awaiting the arrival of two packages that contain various bits and pieces that will become either the supply train or the pontoon train. Exciting times indeed!

-- Stokes

Comments

Bluebear Jeff said…

Just a reminder, Stokes, that Grant's "Wagon Train" scenario is LOTS of fun to play.

-- Jeff

4:38 PM

marinergrim said…

Thoroughly enjoyed your recent article in MWBG. Very well argued.

4:43 PM

tradgardmastare said…

I too enjoyed your recent article.I will give it a go one day having been inspired...

12:16 AM

WSTKS-FM Worldwide said…

Thanks, men! Glad you enjoyed it.

Best Regards,

Stokes

8:20 AM

Anonymous said…

I heartily agree with the above comments. It's always a special issue with one of your enjoyable articles inside.
Weather or not I ever use oils in my painting is another thing, but it got the old brain thinking of my painting style.
Keep up the good work.
Cheers.

1:19 PM

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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