Carbines Attached and Some Inevitable Touching Up. . .

Here are the two squadrons together with the colonel in command and his trumpeter at the fore.

Righty-oh. As far as I can tell, the necessary touching up is now finished. Not too many, but there were a few tiny areas to address with some red, black, and/or white paint and my trusty 000 sable brush, which is just starting to develop a hook after about 20+ years, but it still manages to do the trick when I need it. Plus, I needed to do the gold tassels on the silk bags of the the red-coated Wurttemberg squadron at left. Just their carbine barrels and brass bands on the carbine stocks, then we can begin glossing everything. I don't know about you, but I can almost hear the thundering of hundreds of hooves. What a frightful thing it must have been to be on the receiving end of an enemy cavalry charge.

-- Stokes

Yet another quiet old Christmas greeting from long ago to stretch out Christmas Week just a bit more.

Comments

CelticCurmudgeon said…

My Dear Heinz-Ulrich, Greetings!

What a wonderful way to start the New Year with additional heavy cavalry poised to sweep the enemy from the field. Since this is the 18th century you must be prepared to suffer heavy casualties from the trained infantry and guns you will confront. May your new troopers fight well and maintain their courage and iron discipline.

Your servant,

Gerardus Magnus
Archbishop Emeritus

4:21 PM

Steve-the-Wargamer said…

"What a frightful thing it must have been to be on the receiving end of an enemy cavalry charge." Indeed.. a few years ago I had the good fortune to attend our local horse racing track on a race day... I stood beside the winning post so that the horses would pass no more than five yards away... it is a sobering experience - the ground shakes literally... exhilarating too, mind, and I recommend it wholeheartedly to give you an idea of the likely shock/impact.. Happy New Year, Stokes..

2:31 AM

Steve-the-Wargamer said…

PS. The figures are lovely..! :o)

2:32 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...

Warboss Green Bases. . .

I t's amazing how something as simple as applying two coats of Citadel 'Warboss Green' (ex-Games Workshop 'Goblin Green') can enliven a unit of figures and get 'em that much closer to glossing and completion. In much the same way that applying fleshtone early in painting process helps bring the figures to life. Just some limited dry-brushing to bring out the manes, tails, and some equine musculature, and I'm calling my version of Saxony's von Polenz Cuirassiers, circa 1733, done and dusted. Longtime visitors to the Grand Duchy of Stollen might recall (the blog will turn 19 years old in September) that I generally go for an old school approach when it comes to unit bases and paint them a nice, bright green. Exceptions include command vignettes, skirmishers of one kind or another, transport, camp followers, and various other civilian one-offs. The approach is not to everyone's taste, but I like the cheery toy soldier appearance once everything...

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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