Ab Hoving

Well, we will have to end this thread or it will go on forever, as it seems. Thanks again, all of you. Good to hear that I have fans :-)). Some people asked for the figures I put on my decks. I am not really an advocate for placing people on models, but in this case, because of the plans I have with these models, making life-like posters of them I thought it OK. For this who are interested: I ordered them from an English firm 1001models. Here is the link: https://www.1001modelkits.co.uk/172-scale-figures/233926-red-box-rb72081-english-sailors-16-17th-century--4820316720814.html Maybe a good moment to show my warships here: A Dutch one, Alkmaar, and an English one, Lenox. All in paper. Hope you like them.

Again: thanks to all of you for your warm words. Also on behalf of my son, who is a professional graphic designer. We have a lot of fun working together. I have been thinking what I can do to show this forum some of my work. I worked my way through the reports of the scratch build models section (I am not too happy with kits) and I spotted a few Dutch related items, for instance about the iconic ship type the 'fluit'. None of those threads ended up in a finished product so far. I will show you here some of my paper fluitmodels and the photoshop paintings my son made of them and perhaps we can together decide what to do. As a possibility I could show my techniques of building in paper, making a small historic Dutch ship, like for instance a fish-hooker. I don't know (yet) how to spread pictures between the various captions with text, so this is a bit improvisation. The first model is a whaling fluit I built after data from the Amsterdam lord mayor Nicolaes Witsen's book from 1671, together with the 'paintings' my son made from it. The second is made after 4 hours of footage made by a sub on a depth of 120 meters in the Baltic Sea. It is known as the 'ghost ship' as a result of the fact that the knight heads on deck are carved like men's heads looking up in a sort of sinister way... Let me know what you like and we can plan a new thread.

Thanks for all the welcome words. I am overwhelmed. Let me show you one of the photoshop paintings my son makes from my paper models. This is the Battle of the Sound (1658), when Dutch ships fought the Swedes over the entrance to the Baltics.

Hi Kenny, I remember we had a short correspondence referring to these Tobago wrecks. Sorry the read that you did not make any progress. But you never can tell what the future will bring you... Ab

Well, thank you all for your warm words. I never expected this. I hope I won't disappoint you. Druxey: Yes I know the Wasa. If you don't visit her you miss the 8th wonder of the world. Kurtvd19: Lets not overdo it. It's just a model 🙂 Hans Peters: Glad you liked the book. For the time being I have no plans for new publications, but you never can tell... How to make a paper model?

Hi, My name is Ab Hoving and I live in Holland. Model shipbuilding has been my hobby all of my life and in 1989 I left my job as an art teacher in Groningen, up north, behind to become head of the restoration department Navy models of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. The museum holds a beautiful collection of ship models and parts, collected by the Navy and the Admiralties, dating back to 1640. I retired in 2012, much to my regret. It was a wonderful time, working on the most exquisite models man has made in the past. If in many cases during my professional life I built ship models, my only aim was to investigate building methods, constructions or for instance the usefulness of 17th and 18th century building contracts. The model was never the end product, it was all about the knowledge. Modelbuilding was a method of research for me in those days. Nowadays I build ship models purely for fun. I am not a very good model builder. I always am impressed to see what other people are capable of, with no other purpose than the fun of building. I am sloppy and sometimes too hasty, but I always aim for a realistic look nowadays. Later on I will show you what I mean. To make it easier for myself I use paper as the basic material now. Paper is wonderful versatile and easy to shape material and it takes very little tools to work with. Although I used to make many paper kits of planes and vehicles in my spare time, I never used paper for ship models. It was the papermodelers.com site where I was inspired to build paper ships. The papermodelerssite is a wonderful medium for model builders, but not entirely dedicated to ship modeling. Planes, vehicles, space ships and figurines all show up there. I recommend it to you all to take a look. But probably this forum, specialized in ships and boats, is a better platform to show my efforts and to learn from you all. In the nearby future I will try to post some recent work. Hope you will like it. Best, Ab