Slower Than Molasses in Janaury. . .

The now finished Prussian Blacksmith vignette, which I call 'The Thrown Show.' Figures are from the amazing Minden Miniatures range while the mobile field forge and tools are by Berliner Zinnfiguren. The table was scratch-built using the ends of round toothpicks for the legs and a couple of pieces of white illustration board along with very careful cutting and gluing. Holding one's breath is always extremely helpful with tiny stuff like this.

How's the painting coming along, old man? Thought you'd never ask. Slower than molasses in January to be frank. The usual stuff associated with my courses and students I'm afraid, but I did manage to wrap up an article and send it along to the people waiting on it last weekend. I also managed to finish, finally, the Prussian blacksmith vignette above (the table and tools), and take a bunch of photographs of various things completed earlier this year to send along with the article.

So, while no painting occurred, Saturday was a delightful late morning and afternoon of miniature photography, followed with a bit of careful editing using Photoshop Elements 9 to brighten, sharpen, correct color cast, and crop everything. Hopefully a few of the pictures might be selected for eventual publication.

Miniature photography is almost as absorbing a pastime as painting and wargaming. Needless to say, it is fascinating to learn about how we might present our collections to their best advantage photographically speaking, and when I think of my early attempts at photography back when the Grand Duchy of Stollen blog started. . . Well, let's just say that my pictures have improved ten-fold during the last year or so. Still lots to learn and try, of course, but the rapid progress is nice to see.

With that in mind, I thought I'd include one picture from yesterday's batch of the blacksmith vignette for your viewing pleasure. As for today (Sunday), I am taking some time for myself, darn it, and will sit down to work some on the harnesses and traces of those final half dozen or so wagons and carts. They have sat idle and patiently behind me on the painting table for the last three weeks, but I want to get 'em finished because there is an 80-figure unit of RSM95 musketeers that I want to start.

The plan for these is to paint them as the various contingents of Ernestinisch Saxon infantry, part of the Reichsarmee, with each of the four planned companies in a slightly different uniform. That should help keep things moving forward without too much drudgery. I don't know that I can again face the thought of painting 80 figures in nothing but white uniforms like the two such regiments that already exist in my collection as part of the Army of Zichenau.

In the meantime, let's harness up!

-- 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 ...

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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