Now, it's time for the ground cover. . .

The three Suren ladies offer a range of foodstuffs and drink to weary lead and plastic soldiers in 25-30mm, including bread, rolls, cheese, a leg of something, spirits, and various additional supplies in crates and bundles around back.

Everything now has had two coats of glossy acrylic varnish, and the three sutleresses have been glued into place on the vignette base . Just the usual sand and Woodland Scenics groundcover to add now. If the modelling gods smile on me this evening, I jut might have an hour or so to take care of that. If not, then it's first thing on the agenda for tomorrow (Saturday).

Since this vignette is intended to be handled on the tabletop, durability was a consideration. I have, therefore, resisted the urge to use heavy black thread to model the tent ropes tied to pegs in the ground on a larger base. The more pedantic among you will just have to use your imaginations. Hmmm. I just can't seem to escape that word. But then, we are operating within a semi-fictitious European realm, at least where the Grand Duchy of Stollen and the Electorate of Zichenau are concerned. Speaking of which, I wonder what ol' Irwin-Amadeus II and Hives have been up to recently?

-- Stokes

Here's a shot of the third partner in the concern, who has been sent to retrieve a bundle of something. Now, I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want to tangle with her. Swindlers and the sticky-fingered in miniature beware!

Comments

Ross Mac rmacfa@gmail.com said…

These sutleresses certainly seem to be well......stocked, esp in the overhead views.

Nicely done.

8:16 PM

The Good Soldier Svjek said…

The young lady has a very fine set of lungs ! , Tony

4:30 AM

Steve-the-Wargamer said…

I would say that the lady round the back is offering more than just lemonade! :o)

5:25 AM

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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