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Thukydides

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Everything posted by Thukydides

  1. Great progress. Just a minor comment. It appears to me that you are missing one of the hinges (the very top one) on the rudder. There should be one in that indent right where the rudder enters the counter. Also it is hard to tell from the photo but it looks like they might be upsidedown and not in far enough (though I may be mistaken on this as the resolution on the photo is too low to be sure). See below for a close up picture of my alerts rudder.
  2. Chris has some great kits for beginners. I suspect alert would actually be easier than the lady nelson due to the higher quality materials in it. I believe he also has another cutter he is releasing soon which looks like a great starter kit. Then finally he has a whole bunch of fishing boats if you are looking for something smaller.
  3. @allanyed I am not sure I understand what you mean by first vs second squadron. Can you elaborate? Also how do you print on silkspan, do you attach it to another piece of paper? By triple printing one side you mean you would only use a single layer of silkspan for the flag?
  4. How do you get that nice wood texture on the card? Did you mention it in a previous post? In any case it is looking good.
  5. That is pretty frequent. If you go look at the forum section for new members there is a post discussing the significant number of people who start a build log and never get the model finished. That is why starting with something small (as you have done), is a good idea. I think even in my relatively short time here I have seen a number of build logs I was following just stop posting. Life happens or people just loose interest. I myself had a period of several months where I made no progress on Alert due to a combination of life being busy and being unsure how to proceed with a problem I had with the model. This lead to me feeling unmotivated to work on it and it took some effort to push through that. You will likely have a similar moment and the key is to find little tasks on the model you can get done. I find that having progress to share helps me to want to do more.
  6. Enjoy, there are a lot of good logs on the lady nelson which will help you on your way.
  7. Nice, which one? Cutters are a great first model. Take it slow and read as many build logs as you can. It is always better to learn from others mistakes 😃.
  8. Time for another work in progress picture. I have been slowly working on Salacia (the wife of Neptune). After a few test versions, mostly to try and plot out the layout, I dived in. One thing I have found is that it helps to have a lot of reference photos of the subject. These come in two types: 1) On model pictures (such as the Marshall painting) for getting down the colour and style: https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co521412/cutter-alert-oil-painting 2) The subject depicted in other artwork to help with context: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salacia#/media/File%3AAffreschi_romani_-_nettuno_anfitrine_-_pompei.JPG https://www.encirclephotos.com/wp-content/uploads/Belgium-Antwerp-Salacia-Goddess-Statue-954x1440.jpg This is my progress to date: I feel much better about the cloth on her than I do about Neptune. I plan to depict her holding the stick wth the leaves as she is portrayed in the statue I referenced above. I think this will add balance and contrast where they are both mirroring each other holding an object, but the objects better represent who they are. EDIT: And i got the counter done. I also adjusted neptune a little. Next on to the sides.
  9. Nice fix. I had a similar problem planking alert, but I caught it a bit earlier before it had become so pronounced and was able to just adjust the thickness of the planks to compensate.
  10. I have now finished painting Neptune for the most part. I may go back and make some minor adjustments smoothing some of the transitions more, but it is good enough I think for me to move on to Salacia on the other half of the counter. The toga flowing over his shoulder is the part that I am least pleased with and depending on how I feel about it in a few days I may try to redo that part. I also figured I would show a picture from further away as the zoomed in photos in some ways make it look much more rough than it appears in person.
  11. Another quick update, I got some more time today to do some painting so I finished the transom. I added an extra wavy thing to the image as it looked a bit empty without somthing to fill in the space above the shield. I also have started blocking in the highlights for the blue background on the counter. Still lots of work to make the transitions nice and smooth, but it should give you the general idea of what I am going for. I also decided to get rid of all the yellow edges as I felt that either I need to go all ocher (as in the marshall painting) or all black. Once I have the main painting done I will touch up a bit and add the edge highlights.
  12. They both show fore and aft as opposed to what was done on the model. The image is designed to correct the problem of the holes right by the coming. In other words the image is designed to illustrate a different problem, but in this case it also shows how they should run fore and aft. In any case the model is looking great 😃.
  13. Time for another minor update. I have not had a lot of time to work on the model lately so progress has been slow. However I was feeling confident enough in the right side of the transom mockups to attempt it on the model. I also made the decision to take the plunge and commit to painting the lower counter. I have only done the first coat on the counter (hence why it looks patchy and doesn’t have the gradient). I also made the decision to paint the top rail of the transom (not sure what it is called) black instead of the ochre in line with the marshall painting.
  14. Waterline looks good to me eye. Good job. You are trucking along pretty quick and will catch up to me before long.
  15. Log #38: Mockups of the lower counter I have continued to work on draft versions of the various images I hope to paint on the ship and given my success with the first one I gave in to feature creep and decided to make some attempts at the lower counter. These are much more complicated images and they are made more difficult by the perspective in which they are painted. I can’t just copy them as they are since the space they are painted on in the painting are two very different shapes from the actual counter. Below you can see my first mockup. This one did not get very far before I decided I did not like the way I had drawn it. I stopped after outlining the shape and blocking in some of the shadows. This next one I largely painted trying to replicate the marshall painting. At this point I am not trying to get perfectly smooth transitions, I am just trying to prove that I can largely produce what I want. Though I was happier than this one, I discovered through this attempt however that the perspective stretching was not working very well and the dolphin leaves something to be desired. At this point I decided that I needed to bring in some other sources to help better define the images and to allow me to deviate a bit more from the painting. I discovered that these are likely Neptune and Salacia and I found this lovely image of neptune with two “dolphins” looking very similar to the ones on the Alert. I noticed that he is generally depicted as very muscular so I decided to try and incorporate this more into the illustration. So here is the final attempt (up to this point). I am much happier with the proportions and the dolphin does look much more like what is depicted in the painting. I also feel that doing my own interpretation of the toga or or whatever piece of cloth is going over his shoulder was probably going to be better than exactly replicating what Marshall did. Finally I made the decision to add his trident to solve some of my space issues. I stopped where I did as though I feel this is better than the previous, I wanted to scale up the image to make sure it fills a little more of the counter. Hopefully the next one will be my final mockup before trying it on the actual ship.
  16. This is very impressive. Working at this scale it is wild how much detail you are getting in there.
  17. As a general rule it is better to remove the masking tape while the paint is still wet. You can also try to prevent the edge from happening by doing several very thin layers. If the edge is already there you can use a very fine grit sandpaper to lightly sand it down. Then you can use a paintbrush to carefully fix up any parts that got sanded too far or the edge got messed up by the sanding process. The key is to have a very light touch and go slowly.
  18. Welcome aboard. This is a great place to get help and on your journey into ship modeling. Two things I would suggest that will help you succeed: 1) Start simple - pick a relatively simple model to start with. 2) Start a build log - I cannot articulate how much help and advice I have gotten through people commenting on my build log. All the best.
  19. Log #37: Painting the Transom Images Having done a bunch of practice versions I decided it was time to take the plunge and try putting some paint on the model. I still need to do more practice on certain elements, but I felt confident enough in the centre element to give it a try. In case anyone else ever wants to try this I figured I will document the process for this one in detail and subsequent ones I will just show the final result. For the painting I am using acrylic paint. You can see all the colours I used for reference below. I also used a wet pallet (mine is a fancier one, but you can make one with a plastic tub and a bit of parchment paper). I highly recommend the use of the wet pallet for painting with acrylics as it stops the paints drying out too quickly and you can mix the colour easily as needed. I also primarily used a W&N series 7 000 brush. It has a very fine point which helps with the detail we are trying to get here, but if you are a new painter I would recommend using a cheap synthetic brush until you learn not to ruin them. I also have a cheap walmart brush I use for blocking in larger colours if needed. Step 1 is to find a good position to paint in. I wrapped the model in a dish towel and lightly held it between my knees level with my table. That way I could rest my wrist on the table to steady it as I painted. I used a mechanical pencil to lightly map out the shape. Then using my main shadow colour I blocked in a rough outline of the shapes. I then filled in the areas to be covered with this shadow colour and then outlined some of the brighter highlights with a slightly darker ochre colour. Then it was time to place the darkest shadows so now the highest highlights and lowest shadows have been sketched in. Note the highlights are not very bright at this point, I just am marking where they will go. Unfortunately I got absorbed and didn’t take any pictures after this point. However it was mostly following the same process, just with increasingly higher highlights, refining the shapes as I went. I constantly shift colours going lighter then back to may shadows again trying to blend the transitions. It still probably needs some miner refinements, but I think it holds up well.
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