Horse Grenadiers Are Underway. . .

The company (or is it troop?) of horse grenadiers, plus colonel and trumpeter for those recently glossed 36 Minden Austrian dragoons.

Busy days here in The Grand Duchy of Stollen, with the end of online classes for the semester/term yesterday, but I've managed to snatch an hour or so the last several evenings for some time at the painting table. Still not much to look at, but they're not dsipleasing at this early stage in the painting game.

The basic horse coats are finished except for the trumpeter's grey, which needs so additional attention this evening. Right now, The Young Master and I are headed out into the dark, rainy day to run his Christmas errand, selecting a gift for his mother The Grand Duchess.

I hope for some time back in the painting chair this evening post-Christmas tree decoration, dinner, and bedtime reading with The Young Master. We are working our way through the first Harry Potter story at the moment, which is much better than I expected. Yes, yes. I've managed to avoid the saucer-eyed, zombie-like worldwide fascination with J.K. Rowling for 20+ years until now. But we are having fun reading this together each evening I must admit.

-- Stokes

Comments

marinergrim said…

Just 9? That'll be a breeze for you!

1:14 AM

tradgardmastare said…

I do like the look of these , they are excellent figures and will look splendid on the battlefield.

1:56 AM

James Fisher said…

They are fine figures that will be a joy to paint, I am sure.
I think that you'll enjoy Harry Potter more and more. She wrote a good tale that develops well over the books as Harry gets older. Coming to it late has the advantage of being after all the hype!
Regards, James

6:32 AM

Neil said…

Excellent looking figures. Looking forward to the completed unit.

12:49 PM

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