Von Polenz Cuirassiers, ca. 1733: The Reds. . .

A painting muse of another color visited Saturday, so rather than begin the yellow/gold detailing of the saddle cloths, I tried my hand at highlighting the red coats. . . and saddle cloths. The previously applied darker undercoat was Citadel Khorne Red, and instead of scarlet for the highlight I decided to use Vallejo Flat Red for a slightly more understated look.

Bearing in mind my tendency to overdo it with highlights, I used a #1 round and really tried to restricts myself to simply touching the bristles to the highest points of the shoulders, sleeves, saddle cloths, and valises/coats just behind the riders (I have not yet done anything to highlight the coffee brown musician's coat).

Not sure how successful my efforts were, but I am trying to keep in mind Big Lee's point today about painting for the "Three Foot Rule." I may yet add a dot of scarlet, but the jury remains out on that point. See what you think.

Ok, enough shilly-shallying. When I return to the painting table this evening, following outdoor activities tending to the various flower beds, it's saddle cloth trim in yellow (gold for the officers), dark brown undercoat for the carbines, and black rear cuirasses for the officer and standard bearer since they apparently wore these in the Saxon service. That would explain the glaring lack of shoulder straps across their backs. Wish I'd figured that out with the first 16 of these figures! Remind me to go back and add that feature when these 14 are all finished.

-- Stokes

Comments

pancerni said…

Steady on, the unit will be gorgeous.

3:53 AM

caveadsum1471 said…

Lovely progress, I'm working on some Austrian Hussars, cuirassiers and dragoons at the moment, don't know why the Hussars got a capital letter, they just do, I had to restrain myself from adding an exclamation mark!
Best Iain

2:29 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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