Austrian Limber Teams at the Halfway Point. . .

The three (almost) completed teams and limbers are at left, those waiting to be finished at right.

Here is a close-up of the three ready-ish for glossing.

After almost two hours addressing tiny details following supper this evening, the first three of six Austrian limber teams are juuuusssst about finished, ready for two coats of gloss, and some ground cover on the bases. There are a few tiny things I want to fix tomorrow evening before moving onto the horse collar, straps, and harnesses, bridle, and reins on the fourth team. Phew! Painting draft horses is not for the faint of heart.

-- Stokes

Comments

Der Alte Fritz said…

They are coming along rather nicely! I think you really nailed the fawn grey color of the uniform coats.

Jim

8:14 AM

CelticCurmudgeon said…

My Dear Heinz Ulrich, Greetings!

Why does your group of limbers at the half way point put those completed efforts of others to shame? Your work has been excellent thus far and I speak for the rest of the community which follows you, that we look with great anticipation upon the final project. Just a quick question - will the battery have a mounted commander?

Stay well.

Gerardus Magnus
Archbishop Emeritus

9:52 AM

WSTKS-FM Worldwide said…

Thank you for your kind word, men! The fawn coats are a thin wash or plain old tan over a white acrylic gesso basecoat. The lining underneath the arms long the torsos and up the front of the coats next to the buttons is very think dark brown applied with a tiny brush and much breath-holding. Just enough to offset the tiny buttons.

Best Regards,

Stokes

11:38 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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