Red Facings and Turnbacks Finally Finished!

Here's where we stand now with the second squadron of (Germanic) horse grenadiers in cuirasses and bearskins. That's not a warped base in the rear row, but rather a hardened dollop of super glue dripped onto the cutting mat ten or more years ago that causes the slight lean of one particular pair of cavalry figures and mounts.

Very quiet here in the Grand Duchy of Stollen during these last couple of weeks. The usual encroachments of life into free, uninterrupted hobby time you understand.

It's pointless cataloging the various impediments to painting since school began again a month ago. There has to be an easier way, but, as yet, I have not figured it out. As lamented any number of times here before, by the time The Young Master is tucked in at 8:30 in the evenings, I simply want to collapse into bed myself and not do anything but read or binge on the latest British or Australian TV series that the Grand Duchess and I watch via Netflix or Amazon.

In any case, I have managed at last to get the 'red' distinctions finished on these 14 figures plus the usual retouching of the blues and white shoulder belts after the fact. I think I'll tackle the white wigs and queues next with an undercoat of light tan followed by a sparing highlight of white on top of that before coming back to the white straps around and atop the valises at the back of the saddles.

Still not feeling like the back of the current project has been broken yet, but we're getting there. At some point, I'll need to pull up my socks, tighten my belt, and simply get on with attempting a dapple grey for the trumpeter. This particular horse has been in its undercoat of medium-dark gray for quite a few weeks now without anything further being done to it. It's high time to do something about that.

-- Stokes

Comments

Steve J. said…

I empathise with you on often not having the energy nor inclination to paint once all the family stuff is finished at the end of the day. We just have to be patient and wait for those times when the muse is upon us.

12:45 AM

Big Andy said…

Sometimes painting figure after you have spent most of the day up to your armpits in the little lead gits can be a bit of a trial- which is probably one reason why I'm a slow painter but the other reason is because I'm a slow panter. It is nice to see units growing though

4:21 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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