Some Weekends. . . Sigh!

Well, darn it! There is a much anticipated lull in the reading and course prep this weekend, and I was so looking forward to some uninterrupted soldier painting. And what do you think happened? Yep, I woke up with a cold and slight fever this morning and had to miss not one, but two Friday events, a meeting and a professional development seminar. Not deathly ill, mind you, but I don't feel like doing a darn thing. Even picking up a paintbrush seems less that exciting at the moment. Blah.

-- Stokes

Comments

Wes Rogers said…

Under such conditions it might be best to lie in bed and re-read Charge. Very relaxing book. Tea laced with sugar, lemon and whiskey also helps.

10:42 PM

Bluebear Jeff said…

Stokes,

Sorry to read about your 'malaise' . . . but I suspect that it is your body saying "it is time to rest and recuperate". . . . In other words, "Stay in bed (or at least remain physically quiet), keep your fluids up, and don't try to rush things".

-- Jeff

2:03 AM

WSTKS-FM Worldwide said…

Booth good pieces of advice. Thank you, men. I might just have to try the tea with sugar, lemon, and whisky this evening. That actually sounds like just the thing.

Best Regards,

Stokes

8:48 AM

matthewjksullivan said…

Colds are bad enough, but when they eat into your painting time? Egad. Hopefully you'll be back at the painting table soon. In the meantime, sometimes it's nice to have an excuse to do nothing at all.

10:48 AM

Doug said…

Guess what I got for Christmas?
I got hurt!
Arse over elbow, smacked my hip and back of the head on the ice.
Tylenol, self pity, some booze and lots of sleep.
My old pile of comic books also helped.
Bomb yourself with vitamin C, hope you feel better soon.

11:11 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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