Happy Easter everyone! Well, as the delightful old tune by The Beatles goes, it's getting better all the time (and couldn't get much worse). Despite a solid week of reviewing and evaluating student learning team projects (My brain is mush, and I'll enter the grades tomorrow), I've managed to squeeze in a few brief painting session here and there during the evening hours after the house quiets down.
But anyway.
With the notable exception of the many buttons and the flags, we're just about there except for a few minute touch-ups with flesh tone, to cover blemishes on a couple of faces and hands where I have managed to slop a dash or two of other colors since the faces and hands were first tackled back during the winter. Here are a couple of shots taken this morning and brightened in Fotor (my usual online editor) to illustrate where we are with the third and final batch of the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment.
Wow, that first sentence was a gallop! Or as grammarians might sigh, an exercise in poor syntax and style. I'm so ashamed.
And yet again, I digress!
Now, the eagle-eyed among you will notice two flags printed out onto rice paper. That particular type of paper, I have it on good authority, can be nicely furled post-painting and attaching to flagpoles since it lacks the chemical treatments of modern printer/typing paper. This will be the first time I've tried it, so we'll see how it goes. Keep your fingers crossed!
My unit of 60+ figures, representing the undocumented second battalion of the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment, which for some inexplicable reason has been ignored by most history books (it was the first and only battalion that was later sent to North America), will have two of the same flag. The design was carefully developed by our own David Morfitt of the Not by Appointment blog a year of so ago based on a description of the flag in the Osprey title German Troops in the American Revolution (2) (2025). A striking flag that compliments the (almost) finished figures wonderfully I think. You can take a look at David's work in the photograph below.
Ok, a few "real life" things to take care of next before the Grand Duchess and I reconvene at 2pm to dye Easter eggs together and enjoy some home-brewed German milchkaffe (that's latte to you and me). The Young Master, although he was invited to participate, has declined. Sigh. Teenagers!
-- Stokes
An Early Wednesday Morning P.S.
Working slowly on applying paint to the many, many buttons visible on these castings. Tedious work with a new 000 round brush, but well worth the time and attention. It adds a nice bit of glitter and glam too. Are you ready Steve? Andy? Mick? All right fellas. . .
Comments
I make my flags on ordinary paper - a robust milieu - but skew the shape. That seems to offer a better 'drape' somehow. I'd be interested to see how the rice paper flags look.
Incidentally, I too have a regiment of Anhalt-Zerbst: the 25th Cuirassiers in the service of Trockenbeeren-Auslese.
Cheers,
Ion
Bill P.
Best Iain