It's Getting to Be That Time. . .

No, not quite a painting update on The Heroes of Boucharde, but rather the second of several seasonal images. Long-time grand Duchy of Stollen visitors -- and it is now over 11 years since this blog began its rather circuitous route. . . ostensibly a blog about wargaming plus the soldiers and scenery that go with it, but covering an awful lot of non-hobby territory in the meantime -- might recall my fondness for Victorian, Edwardian, and Wilhelmine images of Father Christmas/Santa Claus. I'm getting into gear a bit late this year, but with only ten days to go until the Christmas Season starts in earnest, there's no time like the present. As usual, pun unintended. Ask the Grand Duchess. I cannot seem to help myself.

At any rate, I am especially fond of depictions that feature Father Christmas in robes that are not the ubiquitous red. This blue caught my eye instantly as I was wasting time last week, avoiding actual work here at home, by scouring the web for suitably Christmasy images. Funny how that happens.

Fear not! Another Heroes of Boucharde painting update to follow later today after breakfast at our favorite local quick-n-greasy breakfast place, skiing around the corner from the house at an area park (we had quite a bit of snow here in Mid-Michigan on Wednesday), followed a hot shower. It's Friday at last. Happy Weekend everyone!

-- Stokes

Yours truly earlier this morning on the way to our local breakfast haunt with the Grand Duchess. Eggs, ham, and hashed brown potatoes that are to die for along with a bottomless cup of coffee. And now I will ski some of that off.

Comments

Fitz-Badger said…

I thought you were going to say "that time for St. Lucia buns". Or has that already come and gone?

5:16 PM

Chris Gregg said…

When do we get the seasonal smell of Stollen cooking on your blog?

8:45 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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