Skip to main content

The Joys of Amazon Giftcards. . .

One of the three sizes of Winsor & Newton Cotman watercolor brushes I ordered this afternoon.  Should have 'em by the weekend!


There is something nice about sitting on Amazon giftcards for a little while until clarity reveals what one ought to use them for.  Such was the case with a remaining Christmas gift from my in-laws this year.  I finally put together an order this afternoon to replace a few dried up, or soon to be, bottles of Citadel colors and also selected two of each of my three preferred brush sizes -- #1, #3, and #6 rounds.  

These are synthetic bristle brushes intended for watercolorists, but I have long used them for figure painting, and the points usually last long enough for three or four units, depending on the size, before they are relegated to the base-coating and dry-brushing jar.  They give me the results I seek and seem to provide a nice compromise between ready availability, durability, and usefulness on the one hand and price on the other.  I'll need to replaced my 20 year old 000 sable before long, but honestly I don't rely on it all that much any more, so the matter is not yet too pressing.

 In other news, I spent about an hour last night carefully applying oil-based silver paint to bayonets, musket barrels, firelocks, and a few officers' swords with my current #1 round, more dry-brushing a very sparing amount to each item, and the result looks rather nice today if I do say so myself.  I'll spare everyone yet another Kodak moment (Remember those?) photographic update until things progress just a bit more though.

 -- Stokes

Comments

Independentwargamesgroup said…
A 20 year old sable Stokes? How many hairs does it have left? It must have as many hairs as is on my head and that isnt many. Ive found that I can use cheaper polypropylene brushes for blocking in and painting bases. They are adequate and after a wash with the GW inks I use the best sables I can afford but even with a bit of care they dont last more than a year or so. So well done.
4:13 AM
Der Alte Fritz said…
All of my synthetic brushes seem to split down the middle and then the ends of each new section start to curl, thus I don't use synthetic brushes anymore.

Jim
8:18 AM
Fitz-Badger said…
One advantage I have as a slow painter is it takes longer to wear down brushes. ha ha

My experience with synthetic brushes is similar to Der Alte Fritz's, so I only use them for things like dry-brushing large items, painting on glue for flocking, and painting on gesso for priming.

I was just eyeing some brushes on amazon last night, and saw some of the Cotman brushes show up in the listings. But I didn't end up buying any brushes.

I remember "Kodak moments" and Paul Simon's "Kodachrome" song.
8:15 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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 ...
5 comments
Read more

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...
3 comments
Read more

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
1 comment
Read more