Snowblind? Or Nearly There?

It's been stop-start, stop-start quite a bit here in the Grand Duchy the last few weeks, meaning that time at the painting desk has been scarce, but I've managed a bit of work now and then building up white washes on the coats, breeches, and waistcoats of the first 20 or so figures that will eventually comprise my version of the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment, circa1770s in the Colonies. Here, we see them just after Saturday evening's session concluded, when I finished the last six figures (front rank, furthest to the right).

Not quite happy with the drummer's sleeves. A bit too much glaring 'Hollywood Smile' white, so those need some more attention, but otherwise they look reasonably good en masse. Must check my to do list, but I think just drum cords, shoulder wings, buttons, and a few other dabs of gold here and there on the tips of scabbards (or sword hilts), and Bob's just about your mother's brother. A few touch-ups too, but otherwise they're shaping up pretty nicely.

Time to look at the next 20 figures now and bore out the hands of NCOs and standard bearers, if memory serves, with my pin vice. Some planning for tomorrow's classes and winterizing (re: leaf gathering) flower beds outside today, though, so I hope there is a spare hour or so this evening where I actually feel like sitting in the painting chair.

-- Stokes

Comments

Stryker said…

Very neat work as always! Painting white is hard (even with the snow goggles) but the shading on these is excellent.

4:24 AM

WSTKS-FM Worldwide said…

Thank you, Stryker! It is an inexact science. And time consuming.

Kind Regards,

Stokes

4:31 AM

caveadsum1471 said…

Lovely looking troops nearing completion, I've got another round of leaf clearing to do yhis weekend, it's all good fun!
Best Iain

5:11 AM

WSTKS-FM Worldwide said…

Thank you! Finishing up the brass buttons now with touch-ups and glossing after that. And then it's onto the next batch of 20.

Painterly Regards,

Stokes

9:09 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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