New Lightbox Photos of Finished Camp Followers. . .

"I gave at the office!" Frau Cornelia Lohmeyer attempts to fend off feckless Bernhard the Stick.

Posing as a half-witted farm laborer, here is cunning gambler and "money lender" extraordinaire. . . Jan-Henrik along with his brother Hrothgar. . . and his other brother Hrothgar. The mere thought of any business dealings with them ought to make your kneecaps hurt. Fugeddaboutit!

The Laundress Tableau, a.k.a. "We need more Calgon!" Soldiers' wives Else and Heike earn extra money by taking in laundry from the officers and men of the Grand Duke's army.

I call this one, "Cecilia and Stefanie Take a Stroll, or Sauntering Soldiers' Wives with Sticky Fingers"

The Fuller Brush man, circa 1759. Niels attempts to work his way across the Grand Duchy of Stollen northwest to Riga by selling shoddy brooms to soldiers' wives like Frau Katarina Rudat.

The Naughty Lola (in green) and her business associates confront the devout Lutheran minister Father Petrus Georg Wilhelm Albrecht Claudius, This, That, and the Other von Licentius as he attempts to save their souls. Again.

Coming to TV this fall. . . The Suttlers! Join Gerda, Helga, and Big (Sugar) Daddy every Thursday evening at 8pm for a half hour of madcap, bawdy, side-splitting hilarity from their small corner of mid-18th century Europe as they accompany the Stollenian army on campaign from one end of the Grand Duchy, to the other, and back again. Why, just look at the size of those beersteins! You've never met a bunch of wacky yet lovable rascals like. . . The Suttlers!

Comments

Fitz-Badger said…

Great photos of some excellent minis! Your porcelain-like style is well-executed as always, and well-suited to the era.

6:25 PM

tidders said…

Super little vignettes, beautifully painted

11:19 AM

Conrad Kinch said…

Mrs Kinch: "I like the pub at the end."

2:23 AM

CelticCurmudgeon said…

My Dear Heinz Ulrich,

My chamberlain, Victor, Johannes, the butler and Messieur Le Blanc, the chef have all noted the excellence of your brushwork. Adding civilians to the mix gives you the potential of having a small town or village actually look occupied before a raid or other military event. Have you plans for utilizing these wonderful miniatures in the near future?

My best regards to your noble family,

Gerardus Magnus
Archbishop Emeritus

6:58 AM

Chris Gregg said…

A lovely blog posting, highly amusing and original.
Chris

5:43 PM

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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