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| A trooper of the Warasdiner Grenz Hussars, courtesy of the New York Public Library via the Project Seven Years War website. I've used Fotor to sharpen and upscale the image. Officers would have had silver lacing apparently although there are different interpretations of the uniform worn by these horsemen. |
Still here but not much brushwork has been accomplished on the current 15 hussars since my last update in August beyond basic black to the sword scabbards and touch-ups to the dark red/maroon undercoat which will later get some sparing red highlights. The usual difficulties acheiving a better work-life balance as the start of the fall semester kicked in on August 31st.
More dramatically, we had a terrific thunderstorm move through the area on the 3rd of September that knocked out power and internet for four days across two power grids. As you might imagine, none of the planned time at the painting table took place across the long Labor Day holiday weekend here in the U.S. Sigh.
What we initially thought was a tornado -- there was a touchdown about 30 minutes east of us in Fowlerville -- was actually a powerful downdraft that, besides knocking out the power, took down many large trees across the area, including one in our backyard and a large limb in the front. Tree guys will be here tomorrow (Monday) morning to tackle those tasks since I lack a chainsaw and am not trained in removing an entire tree safely. Walks around the neighborhood early last Friday and Saturday evenings revealed the extent of the destruction. Considerable large tree damage and some to a few houses too. We were lucky.
We of course have a large propane generator in the garage and two smaller rechargeable Jackery portable battery generators for these occasions, but that's more for the kitchen and refrigerator, water pump, and things like that than luxuries like lights down here in Zum Stollenkeller. It was Monday before the power was back, so just enough time to finish and upload lesson plans and a few related materials to my online course pages ahead of my Tuesday classes following the looooooong weekend.
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On a more interesting hobby note, there has bee a recent question via email from John about how I handle painting officers' lace. Well, depending on lace color, I use silver or gray paint applied with a 000 sable round. The same trusty brush given to my by ol' Mom (a trained artist) 20 plus years ago. It's a little long in the tooth now, but still useful although probably not for much longer. I've also had good results with a new synthetic Cottman #1 round with a very precise point. I've long had the habit of using whatever works, and have used Cottman watercolor brushes with (to my eyes) decent results for quite a few years now.
The silver and gold paints are probably not strictly realistic, and for single display figures 54mm and larger a different approach might be called for. But for 15mm-30mm figures it looks right and catches they eye with some wonderful sparkle and glitter. Perfect for Horse and Musket era figures in my view.
I've been using acrylic hobby and craft paints for lace the last 10 years or so since we came to Michigan, but oil-based paints really come into their own for this particular detail. I've used 'em in the past to good effect. Applied neat from the tube and very sparingly they dry in about 24 hours. Faster than other oil colors do typically. Nothing catches the light quite like oil-based metallics.
Hope that might help answer your question, John! Thank you for touching base. ;-)
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Ok, time to fetch another mug of coffee upstairs, have a spot of lunch, and then get myself to the painting table to paint the basic black fur trim on 15 pelisses and, depending on how time runs, some very sparing charcoal gray highlights. Giddy up!
-- Stokes
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