Happy Feast of Stephen.. .

A cheery seasonal street scene from somewhere that caught my fancy when I saw it.

A clear, starry, moonlit Christmas night has given way to a frosty Boxing Day here at the new Stollen Central. As I have written here in previous years, the calm of Christmas Week following the big day is always a welcome part of the holiday season, and we will continue enjoying the Christmas Festival today with quiet seasonal jazz, our usual mix of traditional German and English carols on CD (remember those?), and a family stroll in another nearby park or nature preserve this morning before more seasonal goodies and yet another fine meal prepared jointly by yours truly and the Grand Duchess.

There is also the daydreaming about how I might paint the Minden SYW personality figures and Russian artillery given to me by the Grand Duchess for Christmas. It's just the added impetus needed to get my painting gear set up on the new painting table. And I have it on good authority that one of the Grand Duchess' authentic Dresdner stollens is in the cards.

In the meantime, I will enjoy a second mug off coffee this morning with sugar and cream, something I never do anymore, having made the move to black coffee several years ago. However, its these kinds of small indulgences that make the Christmas period so delightful. We are extremely fortunate, and I feel very lucky this morning. "Happy Day After!" as my maternal grandfather used to say all of those years ago in snowy rural southeastern Pennsylvania. . . and Happy Feast of Stephen from the three of us here at Totleigh-in-the-Wold!

-- Stokes

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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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