A Sunday Hussar Update. . .

Looking very sloppy at this point. Grand Duchess, Young Master, and lawn permitting, I'll finish the dark red undercoat on everything across two or three painting sessions today.

Snatching some time here and there the last few days to apply a 'Bergundy' undercoat to the 14 Minden Austrian hussars currently on the painting table, with a planned red highlight to be added later. Lots of nooks and crannies with these as you might imagine given the dolman and pelisse modeled on the castings among other items. But absolutely everything was red according to much of the information on Kronoskaf about the uniform(s) worn by the Warasdiner Grenz Hussars, so I can't complain too much.

I've approached this step -- my own blue period -- like one might when repainting a room interior. Trim in the outer edges first (using a #4 round brush with a decent point, time consuming to say the least) and the fill in the inner areas more quickly after the fact. With necessary touch-ups once all of that is done. Afterwards, I think that I might tackle the bridles, reins, stirrup leathers, and other assorted straps on the horses themselves next since that is always a slog later. Might as well get that particular series of steps out of the way before the dreaded tedium demon rears his head.

Finally, the eagle-eyed among you might notice that ol' Nadasdy lurking at the back left corner has had no color applied yet to his particular uniform beyond the bag atop his own busby. He'll get his own distinct uniform, and I'm waiting to do that until I need a break from the other 14 figures in the batch. But I've got a few in mind to mull over in the meantime.

Happy Summer Everyone!

-- Stokes

Comments

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...

Warboss Green Bases. . .

I t's amazing how something as simple as applying two coats of Citadel 'Warboss Green' (ex-Games Workshop 'Goblin Green') can enliven a unit of figures and get 'em that much closer to glossing and completion. In much the same way that applying fleshtone early in painting process helps bring the figures to life. Just some limited dry-brushing to bring out the manes, tails, and some equine musculature, and I'm calling my version of Saxony's von Polenz Cuirassiers, circa 1733, done and dusted. Longtime visitors to the Grand Duchy of Stollen might recall (the blog will turn 19 years old in September) that I generally go for an old school approach when it comes to unit bases and paint them a nice, bright green. Exceptions include command vignettes, skirmishers of one kind or another, transport, camp followers, and various other civilian one-offs. The approach is not to everyone's taste, but I like the cheery toy soldier appearance once everything...

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

Search This Blog