Christmas Week Tinkering. . .

Another old seasonal image, this time wishing us good luck in the new year.

A bit of tinkering at the painting desk yesterday afternoon, opening and sorting several new packets of Minden French artillery, pioneers, a mounted officer, and two 8pdr. French cannon, which were given to me by the Grand Duchess this Christmas Day. Most of these are destined to be painted in the uniforms purportedly worn by the artillery contingent of Lauzun's Legion during the American War of Independence. Some shade of blue (probably darker to mid-) and lemon yellow facings.

Eventually, these figures will become the artillery arm of a small legion or freikorps that I envision, consisting of battalion of line infantry, a company of lights, a squadron or two of cavalry, and said artillery. Rather than make up uniforms of my own, I think I'll depend on actual uniforms from historical formations since there are so many eye-catching examples out there. More on this anon since it now seems like I have various 18th century irons in the fire without actually having done very much the last 12 months or so. 2018 has to be better.

-- Stokes

Comments

CelticCurmudgeon said…

Hi Stokes,
For your legion you might try looking at the Perry Brothers AWI range. They have all the various types of figures including a few grenadiers that you might want to add to the line infantry perhaps to match the company of lights. Their cavalry is also quite good. I had a commission done for Lauzan's legion and the painter used a medium blue color for the gunners which was really quite nice.
Happy New Year,
Jerry
(A/K/A Gerardus Magnus)

8:16 AM

WSTKS-FM Worldwide said…

Thank you, Jerry! All great ideas. Thank you too for the tip on the medium blue for the eventual artillery arm. As much as I love the light blue o the Lauzun infantry and hussars, somehow it does not seem quite right for the artillery. The lemon yellow facings, however, are just the thing. Not the same old dark blue and red.

Happy New Year,

Stokes

9:56 AM

Chris Gregg said…

Great idea Stokes. You might like to be reminded of the Imagi-nations Lauzun's Legion I did a few years ago http://notjustoldschool.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/an-imagi-nation-legion.html
Chris

6:13 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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