Skip to main content

Happy New Year from the Grand Duchy of Stollen!!!

 

Yours truly captured by the Grand Duchess on the trails mid-afternoon on New Year's Eve 2025

From one kind of white to another, the Grand Duchess and I slipped away for a couple of hours of local skiing just 10 minutes up the road from the house.  Once home, we enjoyed large mugs of peppermint hot chocolate with tiny marshmallows, before showers, and my return to the painting table.  Just nine more coats to apply white washes to, and then its onto the multitudinous brass buttons and cockades/hackles.  As usual leaving the drummer details for last, but he should be pretty quick to, ahem, brush up once the other 19 in the current batch are finished.

Happy 2026 Everyone!

-- Stokes


The light of my life, the Grand Duchess Sonja before we unloaded the skis, poles, and clipped in to begin our tour through the Michigan woods.



And one more of yours truly schussing quietly through the woods.  You can't quite see here, but it was snowing lightly as we skied, making the experience even more magical.  I never feel as good as when I am on skis during the winter.


Comments

The Good Soldier Svjek said…
A good new year to you all , Tony
1:50 AM
Duke of Baylen said…
Happy New Year to you and yours.
Stephen
1:56 AM
David Morfitt said…
A Happy New Year to you and your
family, Stokes. :-)
2:09 PM
Fitz-Badger said…
Happy New Year to you and yours! Here's hoping for some improvements in this new year!
3:41 PM
WSTKS-FM Worldwide said…
Thank you everyone! I agree. Let's hope that 2o26 is a less frustrating year than we've all had or observed. Jeeze Louise!

-- Stokes
8:23 PM
Richard said…
Happy New Year.
3:53 AM
Rob Young said…
And a belated Happy New Year to you
4:38 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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 ...
6 comments
Read more

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!
35 comments
Read more

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...
3 comments
Read more