The Moving Forward Mindset. . .

After the Battle of Hohenfriedburg by Carl Roechling. Just about my favorite illustration of 18th century troops. An argument in favor of oversized standards, colors, and guidons for our tabletop troops if ever there were one.

Sadly, this particular weekend -- as feared since the school year kicked off for all three of us here in The Grand Duchy two weeks ago -- leaves little time for soldiering here after about three delightful months of, for yours truly at least, a reasonable degree of painting, modelling, and actual gaming. As will, no doubt be very familiar to many of you coming out of summer holidays and vacation time, you still have to get the same amount of things done with 35-40+ fewer hours of formerly free time each week.

For me, it's mowing the lawn when it dries out enough outside and prep for Monday's classes, plus all of the usual family stuff, which have left precious little time for myself over the last couple of days. Sigh.

Still, onward and upward, eh? Lately, I've been thinking a lot about Austrian flags of the WAS-era. Great stuff, and when I get around to painting more Minden Austrian infantry in 'white' (always a contentious subject), I plan to select three German regiments that had facing colors other than red and give 'em all the older, more varied flag patterns.

I've got a set of Pete's Flags in a drawer somewhere and also scanned them into a pdf file when I purchased them a couple of years ago, since I prefer my flags on white printer paper, which is much easier to shape, furl, and over-paint (ala Jim Purky's method) once dry. But all of that's still down the road apiece.

If I manage to find any spare time today (Sunday), I've got a new squadron of the Minden Bosniaken to sort out and move in the direction of painting preparations. One more squadron of those RSM95 French cuirassiers in bearskins to finish glossing too.

It's all well and good to read and daydream about what one might do next, and that is an enjoyable and even vital part of our hobby, but it doesn't get the figures painted, glossed, and on the table any sooner. Gotta keep the ongoing Grand Duchy of Stollen project on the rails and moving forward this school year with actual production even if that is slowed and more limited somewhat by the usual onslaught of daily Life.

Speaking of which, it's almost 10am here now, and I am off to make Sunday breakfast for The Grand Duchess and The Young Master.

-- 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

Search This Blog