A Saturday Schaumburg-Lippe Painting Update. . .

Just a few buttons and touch-ups to do before glossing. I must admit to feeling very pleased with the way the white highlights atop the light gray undercoat have turned out. Kind of inexact washes, which give a nice, slightly variegated look to the figures.

The first 32 musketeers for my version of the Schaumburg-Lippe-Bückeburg Infantry are just about done save for the buttons, a few small touch-ups here and there, and the usual two coats of gloss before basing.

But no rest for the wicked! I'm getting ahead of myself. Still another 16 musketeers, three musicians, several officers and NCOS, and the colonel's horse before the regiment can take the field. And the flags of course.

Parenthetically, wouldn't that be a terrific name for an English pub in a village somewhere? 'The Colonel's Horse.' It almost screams Midsomer Murders, Richard Jury, or Lord Peter Wimsey. Digression seems to be a way of life around The Grand Duchy of Stollen lately.

As I was saying. . . This weekend, I'll press on with the next 16 figures. A light gray acrylic color blended into acrylic gesso (combining the basecoat and darker undercoat), Citadel Warboss Green bases, and fleshtone depending on available free time. Possible thunderstorms are forecast, so just maybe. . .

But what's all of this about buttons?

Well, tiny details like buttons are not really necessary to paint, but they do catch the light, really adding to the glitter and glitz of horse and musket era figures. No doubt about it. It just seems right for mid-18th century figures and Napoleonics in full dress somehow. Plus, it seems a shame not to lavish a bit of extra time and care on castings as nice as Minden, Fife & Drum, and Crann Tara.

Anyway, you cannot see it in this photograph, but I quickly added button color (I cheat a bit and use gold and silver instead of brass and pewter to help these show up better) to a single test figure last night before retiring for the evening, and the results were extremely pleasing. It's odd how that last little bit of brushwork brings figures almost to life. Saturday is button day. And then the touch-ups.

Why on earth should you paint the buttons? Because they are there.

-- 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