Skip to main content

Von Scheither's Freicorps Pioneers. . .

My Minden figures lack the dashing headgear worn by the fine pioneer fellow above, but the colors of his uniform are extremely pleasing to the eye.  When I came across this particular illustration a few evenings ago, I knew at once that I had found my inspiration as far as colors are concerned.  And by the way, the grenadier to his left also sports a most attractive uniform.  Hmmm. . .  I might just have to add a unit of those at some point.

Finally managed to find a copy online of the illustration, which I found originally in one of my books on Prussian and Hanoverian SYW-era freikorps, and on which I'll base the uniforms for my own two dozen Minden pioneers.  Speaking of which, I just spent an enjoyable hour or so carefully cementing digging and chopping tools into their hot little hands as well as a ladder, a couple of balsa "boards," and a few scratch-built facines in miniature.  

Yes, yes.  It has been a fairly idle afternoon here at home with not much of consequence achieved beyond a few mugs of coffee, a quick trip out to pick up some Valentine's Day cards for wife and child, picking up the Young Master from preschool, and finally making his lunch.  I am indeed a weak and filthy shirker.  A morally and ethically loose cannon. 

Kidding aside, fear not since I will be inundated with a fresh batch of student papers over the next few days, followed by another 10-day (or so) period of reading grading, and providing written feedback to the students in question.

-- Stokes

Comments

Mad Padre said…
Those are indeed handsome uniforms. The wavy lace at the cuffs is especially attractive, if somewhat hard to paint. I would indeed steal those designs.

Popular posts from this blog

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 ...

The 18th century? What's the Fascination?

Hessian musketeers by All the King's Men Toy Soldiers of Snellville, Georgia, U.S.A. Just a quick post post today, but I thought the above question might be interesting food for thought. Obviously, there is an array of possible periods, theaters, and conflicts that might catch our eyes. But what is it about the era 1700-1799 -- either real, or imagined? Is it the commanders and politics? The fairly straightforward tactics? The myriad of uniforms and flags? The variety and scope of the conflicts? The patchwork of various and sundry petty states, (at least in Central Europe)? I'm very interested to learn your thoughts. Don't be a lurker! Please leave a comment -- or even two or three. Have a nice day everyone!

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...