Next on the Painting Table. . .

Familiar Mollo illustrations of period specific Russian troops. The plates from this particular book just have a certain something about them that I actually prefer to more recent book and online sources.

General Paul von Stollen and staff were received well by our son on his 12th birthday last week, so I have started on the next phase for his planned Christmas gift: a two-gun battery of Russian artillery.

Six Minden crew each and a mounted officer for good measure. Fairly simple, easy uniforms to paint although I have taken my time applying washes of scarlet over some very dark red to a pleasing blend of highlights and lowlights.

The black hats and gaiters are done as are the black facings and turnbacks on seven of the figures. Once I finish that, then I'll take care of the fleshtone (doing things a bit out of order this time). And then the smaller details.

Years ago, I painted some Revell Austrian SYW horse artillery as Russians -- Some of you old timers might remember. -- but the Minden figures are much nicer. They should be spectacular once painted, glossed, and manning their guns when the Young Master unwraps them on Christmas Morning.

-- Stokes

Comments

Rob said…

Is it wise doing Russians for the Young Master? They can be uncommonly hard to shift.

3:45 PM

tradgardmastare said…

Glad the gift was received well and I look forward to seeing the battery progress.

2:14 AM

Ross Mac rmacfa@gmail.com said…

Should be a memorable present.

Hopefully he doesn't regularly read your blog.....

9:22 PM

David Morfitt said…

I do agree about the Mollo book; I still find it one of my most inspiring volumes.

Glad to hear your son liked his gift. How could he not? ;-)

Good luck with the Russian artillery and I look forward to seeing progress on them.

Cheers,

David.

11:17 AM

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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