For Der Alte Fritz. . .

A handy photograph from the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.

After a warming trend with rain midweek, the weather has turned cold again, new fluffy snow is on the ground, and trail reports from up north are for very good (cross-country) skiing this weekend. The skis are brushed down and ready to load into the car later today for another weekend jaunt to Northern Michigan following a haircut this morning and a few other work-related loose ends.

Blame my all-consuming love for the winter on Kirk Douglas, Richard Harris, and the fetching Ulla Jacobsson. 'Live to XC Ski!' as the saying goes on a favorite bumper sticker decal.

In other hobby news, painting continues apiece on the Young Master's 3rd Garrison Regiment of infantry. This week saw work on the two drummers. Photo updates coming soon, but I think I've just painted two of the nicest drums ever. Beautifully rendered heads, hoops, and cords without making a mistake. Hey, it happens once in a great while.

Happy Weekend everyone!

--Stokes

Comments

Der Alte Fritz said…

Have a good ski this weekend. Lots of new snow on the ground.😀

9:21 AM

Carnoe said…

Cold over there? Windy over in the UK. Very, very windy...

Looking forward to seeing those fabulous drums!

6:04 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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