Five Down and One to Go. . .

Here's where things stand as of late Wednesday afternoon.

Hmmm. I need to be careful. Otherwise, I might actually tick a few things off the long-term painting "To Do" list. As usual with the ground work, I've tried to suggest minor roads, tracks really, somewhere in region of historic Courland where the Grand Duchy of Stollen is supposed to be located.

As usual, the bases were treated with sand that the long-haired, much younger me collected from my maternal grandmother's creekbed in the summer of 1984, which was then stained with a thin wash of Raw Umber acrylic paint and a flow aid. Then came the Woodland Scenics ground foam rubber, tacked down with acrylic matt medium, along with a few judicious clumps of foliage material held in place by careful drops of Gorilla Superglue. Funny how terraining the bases, even a tiny bit, really pulls everything together and helps the figures and equipment to look well and truly finished. Seems to bring everything to life in other words. Contented sigh.

Time now to paint that team of four horses lurking in the back row plus a few Minden drivers, for the items shown here and a couple of previously completed wagons from last summer, that are still waiting for their drivers.

-- Stokes

Comments

Unknown said…

Hi Stokes,
They do look very good and you have also convinced me to add more detail to my bases when the time comes.
Yours ever,
Simon

4:56 PM

marinergrim said…

They look very good indeed. love those barrels.

1:19 AM

WSTKS-FM Worldwide said…

Thank you, men! Painting equipment like this is a pain sometimes, but once finished, it's worth it.

-- Stokes

9:08 AM

Peter Douglas said…

Stokes
The bases look great - I've taken tips. However I must call you on a couple of points
"long-haired, much younger me collected from my maternal grandmother's creekbed in the summer of 1984"
By my calculation given your recent 29th birthday, you must have been in utero or maybe even not even a gleam in your father's eye.
Also a dapper lad like you with long hair? Fine for a barbarian like who was a lad in the hairy 70s, but not for such a style icon as yourself!!

Cheers
PD

1:28 PM

Stryker said…

They do look truly superb but how will they fit with the old school basing of your other forces - or are they for a separate project?

2:43 PM

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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