Items on the Early January 2021 Agenda. . .

Young Master Paul's forthcoming Prussian garrison regiment all tacked down to their temporary painting bases and ready for base-coating. I am toying with the idea of mixing lots of dark blue into the white acrylic gesso to combine the first couple of steps into one. Not sure if that's the way we'll go quite yet though.

Happy New Year (properly)! It's actually already January 3rd, but I've taken a few days away from the hobby as we have de-decorated and put the house back in order. The Young Master has been occupied with other things too, so we have not yet had our planned New Year's Day raid-rescue game, but we'll do so later this afternoon in a few hours.

The two of us have also discussed what to do with his Minden Prussian musketeers that he received for Christmas, and have figured that either Frederick's 1st Garrison Regiment, or 3rd Garrison Regiment will fit the bill for relatively simple uniforms that don't require too much facing color. Just red coat tail turnbacks and colored hot pompoms. Otherwise dark blue, black hats and gaiters, fleshtone, brown musket stocks, white shoulder belts, metallics, and green bases.

Between the two of us, we should (should. . . As in might be able to) manage the 40 or so figures and get them painted in a somewhat shorter length of time than is the usual state of affairs here in the Grand Duchy. My late maternal grandfather once remarked to the teenaged me in the midst of an interior repainting project I undertook in the upstairs hallway of my grandparents' house outside of Philadelphia. "You paint well, but you're slower than hell." I digress however.

Returning to the point at hand, the flags for either regiment are similar, yet different in interesting ways. Interested parties can refer to the Project Seven Years War website to peruse the details. I have advised Young Paul yesterday, given the similarity of the uniforms worn and flags carried by these two units, that he needn't decide quite yet which one of the two his figures might become. At least not until the hat pompoms and flag over-painting stages.

And, of course, if he prefers to take a more imaginary approach, that is certainly also viable. We are operating within The Grand Duchy of Stollen after all, and they are his toys! I am taking care to provide advice and inspiration, but also to follow his lead here. Paul already refers to me humorously as "Bad Dad" and sometimes "The Evil Dadbot," but I don't want to annoy him by taking over his inaugural soldier-painting project.

At any rate, we plan to begin the base-coating process this week in the afternoons following conclusion of school via Zoom. The Young Master is back in the thick of it starting at 8:30 Monday (tomorrow) morning. Yours truly, by comparison, does not begin classes until Monday, January 17th this year although there is plenty to keep me busy until then, starting tomorrow morning when I check work-related email for the first time in two weeks. Sigh.

In the meantime, I plan to work a bit here and there today and this evening on those nine Austrian horse grenadiers that I've been nattering on about for some time. We're not yet to the super-detailing stage, but they are coming along pretty well.

-- 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

Gallia said…

I've mixed water base paint into Blick's Matte Acrylic to ease the next color painting step. Sometimes I use the BMA as an initial coat if I don't use a spray can of primer paint in the winter. Best wishes about the new project.
Cheers,
Bill P.

1:44 PM

Independentwargamesgroup said…

You lucky so and so Stokes, to have a son and one that has some soldiers. Have you considered aa black undercoat, which would allow a dry brush effect over them to highlight the blue. For novice painters it seems a good way to start, your son can then build from the basic colours. Best of luck

10:25 AM

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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