A Painting Update for July 27th. . .

Here's where things stand by the evening of July 27th.

A couple of pleasant painting sessions in the ol' chair yesterday. One in the afternoon, and another during the mid-evening after The Young Master's bedtime and a walk around the neighborhood. Still lots to do, of course, but the first 32 of the musketeer figures are coming together.

A couple of painting points. One, various sources differ on the color scheme of the hat pompoms and tassels of the Schaumburg-Lippe-Bückeburg Infantry. Some say these were plain white, others suggesting red and white. I've opted for the former (actually white atop a light gray undercoat).

Likewise, when it comes to the jacket lapels, sources indicate either red, blue, or none at all. After double-checking, I went back and repainted them dark blue, highlighted sparingly with a mid-blue to match the rest of the coats. Neck stocks too seem open to question when it comes to color. I went for red this time around as a change from my usual default black.

The second painting point was. . . Well, darn it. I've now forgotten the second observation, which clearly must have been very important! Either a senior moment, or not yet enough coffee to clear the early morning fog. It is just before 8am here in The Grand Duchy.

In any case, I think it's time to finish the leather shoulder straps for the remaining dozen figures in the forefront of the picture, and then add hair-queues, mustaches, hat lace, and visible buttons for all 32, making sure everything is at the same point and finished, before moving onto the next 16 bare metal castings in the back of the room.

Ideally, I'd like to finish painting and glossing this unit and get them affixed to their Litko plywood bases by September 1st when the fall semester kicks off. Let's see if that actually happens. In the meantime, "Charge!"

-- 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

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