The Grand Duchy of Stollen

        A nd just in time, since Birthday #12 is just three days away.  I give you General Paul von Stollen ab und zu Hasenpfeffer!   As explained in my previous post, the combination of a Russian general with Prussian officers is unorthodox, but von Stollen (in Russian green) is of Baltic German extraction and currently in the service of The Grand Duchy of Stollen (in Prussian blue).  An inveterate trickster, he thumbs his nose at the czar in nearby Saint Petersburg by continuing to wear his Russian uniform. This was an especially fun vignette to paint!  Three coats of gloss yesterday and the groundwork last night after the Young Master's bedtime.  However, I was in such a hurry to take, edit, and share photographs here that I neglected to take a large, soft brush to brush off stray bits of the Woodland Scenics turf material from the figures.   As always, I have spotted a few tiny areas, looking at the photos, that need some f...

  Paul von Stollen ab und zu Hasenpfeffer along with staff all basecoated and ready for painting. O ne benefit of amassing a pile of unpainted lead, or in my case a drawerful, is that very often you can root around and find just what you're looking for without too much trouble or thought when it comes to that next painting project.  And so it has been with the latest smaller effort before diving back into another large unit of infantry. The Young Master will have his 12th birthday at the end of the month (Can you believe it?), and I thought it would be fun to present him with his very own tabletop avatar: General Paul von Stollen ab und zu Hasenpfeffer , an officer of the Baltic German nobility who served in the Russian army during the Seven Years War but has more recently transferred to the Stollenian service.   So, Thursday evening after his bedtime, and before my own, I stole back down here to Zum Stollenkeller , opened the Drawer o' Lead, took out my plastic orga...

  A nice, shiny, and cheery unit of toy soldiers ready to take the field. N ot yet affixed to their permanent bases, but here they are!  My version of the Schaumburg-Lippe- Bückeburg Infantry.  Flags are pending of course given our recent and ongoing internet issues here in The Grand Duchy, which have thrown my cordless printer out of sync, so I have not yet printed the flags to overpaint in my 'paint by numbers' way.  Shortly, I hope.  As for the unit shown above, I painted them based on three sources: Mollo, Kronoskaf, and Digby Smith, so their appearance, while in the ballpark, is not quite identical to any of the three references noted.  I am not sure if I should put all three NCOs in the third rank, or place one of them at the far right of the line looking along the three companies to check their alignment.  What do you think? As always, the figures are not perfect, but this unit is one of the nicer bunch of line infantry I've painted in some tim...