Some Christmastime Cruisin' in the Painting Chair. . .

Except for the touching up once they are attached to their respective flagpoles, along with some judicious red and blue highlights, the squadron standards are done. Oversized in the fine tradition of Peter Gilder and Doug Mason, who, more than any other modellers, continue to inform how I approach figure painting.

Not quite two hours in the painting chair this blustery, wet afternoon, but I've managed to get the two squadron standards to a point where I think they'll, provide a reasonable approximation of the real thing once mounted and glossed. I used a #4 round with a good point to apply the thinned dark read and navy blue acrylics, than a brand new #1 round to dab on squiggles and lines of GW gold plus a bit of to the standard at left. This is the first time EVER that I have attempted the painting standards BEFORE attaching them to the flagpoles.

While far from perfect, they'll do the trick, and I'm very pleased with the results. Live and learn as the saying goes, and I think this is the way forward when it comes to future flags, standards, and guidons. Anyway, once carefully mounted on their flagpoles, I'll touch up the gold fringe anywhere white still shows along the edges and then add some final red and royal blue highlights before glossing figures and flags, which will probably take "a coupla three days" as we used to say in my family.

Next up, let's get the carbines attached to the troopers in the second red Wurttemberg squadron while things are on a roll.

-- Stokes

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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