A Few Final Touch-ups. . .

Not yet cemented to their permanent Litko bases, but here they are.

An hour or so in the painting chair early this Sunday afternoon doing the inevitable touch-ups with Citadel Warboss Green (ex-GW Goblin Green) along the edges of the figure bases before gluing everything down this evening. I've also spotted a few very tiny details I want to add before calling this composite battalion of grenadiers DONE. Almost inconsequential things only a painting pedant like me will notice after the fact, but there you are.

Next up, the long threatened composite battalion of Prussian grenadiers in mitre caps, which will be based on uniforms worn by Württemberg and Hessian troops of the period. Tomorrow is our 13th wedding anniversary, but as The Grand Duchess will not return home from her conference in Hawaii until Wednesday afernoon, I feel relatively safe in spending time on the new batch of painting tomorrow.

In the meantime, The Young Master and I are headed out for another Tour de Cul de Sacs around the neighborhood on our bikes early this evening before dinner. Today has otherwise been a very easy Sunday. We both slept very late -- I can't recall the last time I slept undisturbed until 10am! -- and after showering and tossing on some khaki shorts and a short-sleeved shirt, Paul and I went out for breakfast to our favorite quick and dirty about ten minutes away in a nearby small town. After both ensuring premature hardening of the arteries, we swung by the local supermarket for milk and, most important, a new box each of popsicles and fudgesicles.

As The Kinks sang, lazing on a sunny afternoon in the summertime.

-- Stokes

Comments

Matt said…

Sounds like you have taken Sunday seriously.

Figures look fantastic and congratulations on your anniversary.

4:26 PM

WSTKS-FM Worldwide said…

Thank you on both counts, Matt! In August, it will be 18 years since Sonja and I first met. It took several more years to wear her down and get her to tie the knot. Whew!

Best Regards,

Stokes

5:12 PM

The Good Soldier Svjek said…

I do like a lie-in , but feel guilty afterwards . I notice that I haven't painted just after gloss varnishing ! Grrr !

2:24 AM

warpaintjj said…

Sounds like a perfect day for the son & heir and his father, especially the sleep in!
Very best wishes for your anniversary,
Jeremy

7:41 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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