Hubac's Historian
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I’ve been enjoying a very restful and beachy vacation in Cape Cod. I brought one of the aft upper bulwark plates with me, and have been busily cleaning up the frieze, securing eyebolts for the gun tackles, filling some holes and drilling others. Not much to really show there. I did, however, happen upon this other build of the Heller kit, and it is wonderfully vivid in it’s use of color and shading: https://modellistinavali.forumattivo.com/t3669p75-soleil-royal-1-100-heller I thought it may interest some of you to take a look.- 2,689 replies
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Actually, looking at it a little closer, now, I do think that before you glue-in the hawser pieces, you will want to do a good dry-fit between the bottom of the hawse pieces and the head knee extensions that wrap around the bow, and below the hawsers; if the hawse-piece obstructs the knee extension, in any way, that will be much harder to trim after the hawse piece is glued in-place.
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I think it will not pose any problem to do so, Bill.
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Nicely done, Bill! One observation - you may want to glue and putty in your hawser entry holes pieces sooner than later, so that you can paint the continuation of the bee-lines in this area.
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Yes, three cheers for the big cats! 48, this summer. Summer of 69 for you, Bill?
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Bee lines look very good, Bill!
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Very well done! I think you will continue to be pleased with your first effort, even as your skills continue to improve. There is very much to be proud of here; clean woodwork, and taught rigging are major accomplishments!
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Apart from everyone else’s excellent suggestions, I think it is always a good idea to sight the beelines with your eye close to the hull; look from bow to stern for a fair run, and then again from stern to bow. Because there is such a stark contrast between the black and yellow, you want to make sure there aren’t any unwanted flats or wobble in your lines. They should all be fair, smooth curves.
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You have made a wonderful model, B.E., and it has been a pleasure to watch your meticulous care and attention to all details, great and small. While Chuck makes an excellent kit, it still requires great talent and finesse to bring it to its fullest realization. Congratulations on a job well done!
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This looks really terrific, Tom. I look forward to seeing this in person, in New London!
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Thank you, John! Yes, 4-5 hours is a lot, and lately the exigencies of day-to-day life have made it impossible to maintain that pace. Nevertheless, progress is being made and I remain highly motivated to push the project forward before the show. Painting the monogram escutcheon centers blue does a lot to highlight their detail. This is one of the things I always thought to do differently, if and when I ever built the kit again. As the upper decks begin to go in, I will design railings for each deck level. My basic idea, here, is that the railing “spindles” will mirror whatever the corresponding paneling or design is for the quarter gallery and stern balconies, at each deck level. I’m not sure I’m expressing what I really mean, but all will become clearer as that time draws nearer.
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Yeah, I’m with you on that. After my current project, I’ll take on one small fully framed model - probably La Belle - to learn the craft, and then, it’s off to my masterpiece! I only hope that my eyes and hands hold up to the challenge.
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Extremely well done, and patiently realized. BRAVO!
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Agreed! I have found tremendous differences in the working properties of acrylics within the same brand, even, but different colors. For example, as a wood base-coat, ModelMaster Random Tan goes down effortlessly over broad surfaces without diluting. Don’t assume ModelMaster flat black will do the same, though; thinning is an absolute must. Same again, for their Insignia Red. Those colors, though, exactly meet my needs. Interestingly (to me at least), I made heavy use of those same colors on my first SR, but with no washes or distressing. Totally different result!
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I think the primary difference among Vallejo formulations is their viscosity. I find that I have to shake my mix in the shot glass, frequently, because the pigment falls out of solution. Overall, though, the Vallejo paints are excellent. I needed an alternative to Tamiya, which I found almost impossible to brush.
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TAKE TWO: The walnut ink was something suggested to me at an art supply store. It has numerous advantages over ready-mixed acrylic washes - chief among them is that the product is fully reversible right up until the sealer coat goes on. In the early days, I applied this stuff straight out of the bottle and wiped away the excess using a Q-tip wrapped in old cotton t-shirt scraps. This worked well, but you couldn’t do much surface area, at a time, because the ink dried so quickly. This wasn’t a big deal because the ink is re-activated with only a little water on a damp brush. Anyway, my early applications to the gunport linings were probably a bit on the heavy side. I discovered that not all acrylic paints are as sturdy, when it comes to wiping away the excess. The artists’ acrylic yellow ocher that I use - from Vallejo - is pretty soft and fragile for a good while after application. In the interest of time and a desire to not have to retouch the yellow paint all of the time, I developed another, much simpler approach. Over time, I arrived at a protocol that allowed for a greater working area and much more easily modulated results. Here is what I do. First: Shake the ink bottle thoroughly; there is a fine sediment that settles to the bottom, and I am certain that this lends some beneficial result to the final effect. Step 2: Mix a 1:1 ratio of ink to tap water in a shot glass. Shot glasses are great for mixing small paint batches because they don’t allow the mix to spread out too thin and dry out prematurely. What you are aiming for is a mixture that resembles Soy Sauce. Step 3: Use a wide, flat brush to work the mixture into every crack and crevice. Don’t worry at all about doing this carefully. Just cover everything in a 2-3 square inch area. The result will be too dark, blotchy and it will begin to dry on you before you can even get to the next step. Don’t worry - this is all okay! Step 4: Dampen a smaller flat brush in clean water, and float a layer of water over the entire area you just covered. This will instantly dilute and begin to homogenize the ink. Blot your small brush onto a smooth-finish table napkin (unlike paper towels, they don’t release loose lint), and then very lightly draw up any loose liquid still floating on the surface, blotting the excess as it becomes apparent that the brush isn’t taking up any more excess. Don’t over-worry the cracks and crevices, these are the places you want the ink mix to wick-in and dry. The long mouldings take a little patience to find that right balance of fluid so that just a little color is left in the hollows. If, ever, you feel you messed up, just re-saturate the area and start over. Interestingly, the next section seems to blend seamlessly into the previous section. There’s a little art to it, but it is really a pretty simple process to master with absolutely zero permanent risk to the model. One thing to try and avoid is allowing air bubbles to collect on the surface and dissipate on their own, because they will leave ink freckles after they dry. Not a big deal, if they do, but smoothing them away with the damp blotter brush eliminates this problem. All of this being said, I haven’t even tried model purposed washes, and they also seem very easy to use and modulate - at least on the various YouTuber channels I watch. Walnut ink just happens to be what I started with and it is working so nicely for me.
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Thank you very much, Kevin, for the kind compliments. I was in the midst of composing a very lengthy and detailed response to your question about the walnut ink, when my thumb pressed something, and I was shifted out of my composition editor. When I tried to backtrack, I had lost the whole post. That’s a little frustrating, so I’m going to step away from the phone for a bit, lest I throw it against something hard. I promise to return, in a bit, with an answer.
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Thank you, gentlemen, very much! Wefalck, you make an excellent point about oxidation - something I had not considered. I will continue with the silver in limited use, though, because it really makes certain details pop. Victor, I’m afraid that if you were to watch me for a week, you would certainly fall asleep, since the process of watching me paint (or do anything, really) is glacial in its pace. That really is the only mystery to it - heaps and heaps of time. Sometimes, I’ll watch Andre Kudin’s YouTube videos and he works with marvelous efficiency, while creating extremely clean work. Learning to speed up my process without sacrificing quality is a goal of mine.
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It has been about two and a half weeks of very focused and intensive paint work. The starboard, forward bulwark is fully painted, and I have the base colors down for the port side. Here is an illustration of the effect that the walnut ink has in muting the intensity of the base colors: These pictures give a sense of the difference, but the effect is more clearly apparent, in person. The brown of the walnut ink lends just enough of a green cast to the lighter, cerulean blue to better approximate a period French blue. It also has the effect of transforming the darker cobalt to more of an ultra-marine shade. The following closeup gives a good sense for the interplay between the darker old gold and the brighter gold used to highlight all of the larger ornaments: It is also more apparent in that picture, the way the ink gets into the moulded depressions of the yellow ocher trim; they dinge-down just enough to have credible depth. While it may or may not have been a feature of actual practice, in the 1680s, I have made an artistic decision to incorporate silver leaf into areas of the ornamental program where it adds emphasis and clarity to the carved works. Here, I’ve decided to highlight the under reliefs of the acanthus branches: I am pleased with the dolphins, and even used silver to pick-out the eye relief. One thing to note, this is the one dolphin hancing piece where the hancing moulding is located properly beneath it; on the aft bulwarks, owing to the layout of the sheer steps and the timberhead railings, that is not the case. I included the mouldings there, anyway, because they added more than they detracted from the overall design. Well, after very much retouching, this is the highest quality brushwork I can produce. I will methodically continue along this path, right up to the show in October. At the least, I am hoping to have one full broadside installed. We’ll see. It is a very busy summer, and the days and weeks are just ripping by! Today, I am giving myself a little break from painting, and am making the hanging knees that are just visible beneath the break of the quarter deck. Thank you all for looking in!
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Regarding what other modifications can be made - and, certainly, this is entirely a matter of personal preference - you might consider sanding down the Heller wood grain structure. You don’t have to sand it away completely, necessarily, but the paintwork looks better when it is muted. This is kind of a big undertaking, which is better done before Daniel’s PE parts are applied. Anyway, I thought that now would be the time to consider it. I, personally, did not realize this until after I had applied simulated through-bolt heads to all my wales. I was simply unwilling to sand all that work away, so I compromised and sanded the planking between the wales. In the end, it isn’t exactly perfect, but worked out just fine because it is the bolt-heads that draw your eye.
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Exactly! Yes, the evergreen cuts smoothly and I end up doing a lot of scraping with the edge of a honed knife, in order to arrive at softly rounded surfaces. I haven’t had much success with heat-bending, though. I’ve tried curling irons, hairdryers and open flame. In each instance, there is a flashpoint where the Evergreen sheet goes from bendy to a misshapen mess, in an instant. Sometimes, I’ll laminate a bend into the plastic, over a form. Often, as with my stern gallery bulwarks, I’ll induce a bend simply by taping the part around the outside of the breadcrumb canister and leaving it there for a few days. When I remove the part, there is very little spring-back. And, often enough, bends can be induced with your fingers. Like you, I am intrigued by the use of metallic gilt foils. I would think that it is quite tricky to get the foil only where you want it. There is one very talented builder here, SafeMaster, who manages the art to perfection. His Heller Reale looks as though it sailed right out of the 17th C. into modern times. The gilt work is extraordinary, as is absolutely everything else about the model:
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Yes, for whatever reason, the moulded waterline on the Heller Soleil Royal creates the impression of an excessively shallow draft. With her exceedingly tall stern, she looks as though she’ll capsize the instant she lets loose with a rolling broadside. Raising the waterline 1/4 - 5/16” does much to correct this anomaly, visually. I found it more expedient to simply cut the lower hull away and make it a diorama model; of course, doing so was the only way for me to even entertain broadening the hull, at the bow. So, not to hijack your log with my project, but that is what I was referring to. Most of my carving work is with evergreen sheet styrene. It is lovely to carve, as it is considerably softer than the kit styrene, and you don’t have any alternating grain issues, as you do with wood. If I don’t have sheets thick enough for the part I’m making, I simply laminate stock until I arrive at the dimension I need. That being said, I will have to make a full figure relief for the Africa sculpture, and I do not think that I will do that in plastic; too much lamination required, so I’ll carve that one in boxwood, or pear.
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Thank you very much, Kevin! The SR project began with certain very specific alteration objectives, but it quickly took on a life all its own, once I realized how relatively simple it was to make parts and details from scratch. Like you, I’m simply applying my trade skills as a woodworker and woodcarver to this smaller scale. Fortunately, this project is the perfect outlet for my OCD and obsessive love for the ship. The Heller SR makes into a very nice model, even if you do little more than raise the waterline and thicken the gunport openings. It would, of course be completely fascinating to see you remake the stern through the application of your CAD skills. That is an interesting detail, where Vic’s lower finishing joins the counter. I have never seen that before, myself. Also, it is heartening to see that the original builders were, themselves, prone to a little fudgery, here and there, to make things work.
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I think the answer may be “who knows, for sure,” but the journey sure will be interesting!
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