Only -6 Degrees Fahrenheit in the Grand Duchy This Morning. . .

The view from our front porch a short while ago this afternoon at about 1pm. A high temperature of about 16 F. is forecast for today, almost 30 degrees warmer than yesterday, so the three of us are headed out to ski later this afternoon once the Grand Duchess and Young Master arrive home.

Frigid winter weather provides the perfect excuse for extra time at the painting desk. After all, one can hardly be asked to go (ok, 'sent') outside to clean out the gutters or engage in other kinds of domestic husbandly pursuits that, if we are honest, many husbands/male partners would rather not do. So, I too have been plugging away with the 30 or so grenadiers in the composite battalion currently on the table.

Most of my efforts the last few days have gone into getting the facings and turnbacks started with a dark red -- Citadel's Khorne Red -- which will then get a dash of Evil Sunz Scarlet applied very sparingly atop that. I've also started to clean up figures here and there as I have gone along, trimming in edges and touching up adjacent areas. Still lots of small things to paint, but they are starting to come together. I hope you'll agree once I popt a photo update or two this evening. Stay tuned!

-- Stokes

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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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