The Light! The Light!

After some intense brushwork during the weekend, I can report happily that we are approaching the end of work on my version of Austria's Wied Infantry, which has been in progress, albeit haltingly, since, oh. . . Last August? In short, I can see light at the end of the painting tunnel with these 60+ figures.

After fumbling my way through the regiment's three drummers (shoulder wings, drum cords, hops, etc.) on Saturday, and retouching poor ol' Drummer#3 yesterday afternoon, I moved onto touching up the dark brown musket stocks on all musketeers across the three companies. I organize my units more or less according to the guidelines laid out by Young and Lawford in Charge! Or How to Play War Games (1967) for those who might be scratching their heads.

I next moved onto the officers' and NCOs' swords and/or scabbards yesterday evening after the Young Master's bedtime. 45 minutes, or so, later and the unit began to sparkle. All of this is simply a long-winded, bloated, and even self-important way of saying that we are now at the fine detailing stage for the entire unit.

Ahem.

Officers' gloves, hundreds of brass buttons, a few mustaches, and a few small touch-ups here and there before glossing. Once I overpaint and gloss the beautifully striped flags, the better to help them fit in with my general painting style, it will be time for permanent basing. They might, just might be ready to go for the Christmas Week game between the Young Master and myself.

Afterwards, I am torn between jumping right into another 60-figure Reichsarmee infantry unit, a 30-figure cavalry regiment, or perhaps the Russian dragoon squadron of 14-15 figures, which was a gift to my son for Christmas 2021. He has been very patient with 'Bad Dad' (his nickname for me), and my conscience hurts for not getting to them sooner, so I suppose these should be my first hobby priority in the new year.

-- Stokes

Comments

Duke of Baylen said…

These are looking good and I look forward to seeing them complete.

You could let your conscience be your guide - I've gone back to some figures my daughter bought me for Christmas at least 2 years ago!

Alternatively, you could let the roll of a dice make the decision for you!

Merry Christmas,

Stephen

6:12 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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