Musket Detailing. . .

After several [shorter] sessions -- three or four? -- in the painting chair today, the musket detailing is finished. Brass fittings, trigger guards, firelocks, highlighted [musket] straps, and the ramrods in gun metal on the underside of the stocks. Yes, I realize my head should be examined because no one will ever notice them. But I know they are there.

One more easy session this evening to tone down the shako plates with an Army Painter wash, which will also bring out some of the detailing, but then I'll call it a day. The old eyes are tired, and it has been a pretty good day's work with a minimum of mistakes to correct. Nice when that happens.

Tomorrow (Sunday), I'll start the scabbard belts and possibly the brass detailing on the scabbards. There is quite a bit on the Minden figures, and I'll naturally want to suggest the presence of some on the slightly less detailed RSM95 figures in firing position.

-- Stokes

A Sunday Morning P.S.

The painting muse was still with me last night as I wrapped up the work on musket detailing, so I squeezed a few drops of Army Painter 'Basilisk Brown' (really a dull yellow) onto my palette paper and got to work applying the facing color to just three figures in the back row. You know, just to see how that particular step might go. Pleased with the results. Cuffs and collars look good, so I'll finish the rest later this morning after another mug of coffee and getting dressed for the day.

At the moment (9:35am), still in my pajamas enjoying a first mug of my dark mistress with the cats nearby you understand. A lovely, sunny day blooming outside. Birds singing and other early spring activity happening. And while I could do with another month or so of skiable snow -- There are places out west in the Rockies and Cascades where the ski season lasts for five and six months! -- springtime ain't too bad either.

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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 ...

The 18th century? What's the Fascination?

Hessian musketeers by All the King's Men Toy Soldiers of Snellville, Georgia, U.S.A. Just a quick post post today, but I thought the above question might be interesting food for thought. Obviously, there is an array of possible periods, theaters, and conflicts that might catch our eyes. But what is it about the era 1700-1799 -- either real, or imagined? Is it the commanders and politics? The fairly straightforward tactics? The myriad of uniforms and flags? The variety and scope of the conflicts? The patchwork of various and sundry petty states, (at least in Central Europe)? I'm very interested to learn your thoughts. Don't be a lurker! Please leave a comment -- or even two or three. Have a nice day everyone!

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...

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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