Well, here’s a few pics of my progress on the Soleil Royal. Overall, I’m happy with my work, though I have a lot of touch ups to do here and there. Going with a totally blue hull was a very good thing for me. I’m really satisfied with it. Here’s the whole thing…
I’m very happy with how the stern is coming is coming along. The gold work was a blast to paint.
And here’s one of the galleries. It took about 5 hours total work to do, along with some serious eye strain.
I’m working on tedious little things right now, and then move on to the stern balconies and the rest of the gold work. Once done, I’ll be taking a break while I wait for my books to come in for the rigging, and I’ll be working on the Heller La Reale in the interim. So JTilley, if you want to dust your Reale off, I’d love to work on them in tandem. I may want to try and correct the innaccuracies on the oars and will need your help with it…
I think she’s looking really nice thus far Phil…that blue, and gold detail work looks awesome!. . Now rest those eyes, and hands, and get back to work…lol. Looking forward for more pics.
note: if i were able to muster up enough courage to attempt to change the galleries, would i be correct in thinking i’d would need to:1- remove the 4 outer windows in the 2nd photo?, and 2- remove 6 panels in each of the galleries along with installing some sort of decking continued from the stern area?
That’s pretty much it. I would do it (I haven’t put the galleries or balconies on yet) but I’m more than a bit nervous about cutting into them. I’m not THAT good. But the windows have to be removed, and floors have to be added. Now for the galleries I’ve seen two approaches. One approach took the panels that were cut out of the galleries and put them on the hull of the ship, adding some pieces to fill in the gaps. This was very attractive. I’ve also seen where the panels were discarded, leaving the hull showing. Either way, Sheet styrene is then used to create a new “floor”. Not an overly difficult job, but one that I’m not willing to undertake.
As for the paints, I’m pretty much a mixed bag. I only use acrylics. Primarily, I use Citadel and Games Workshop Acrylics, along with some of the Testor’s Acryl. I like the Citadel and GW paints because they are very pigment heavy and there is an insane number of colors available in a variety of shades. I’m a big fan of “Vomit Brown” as a substitute for regular ole’ tan. Much more vivid. But, I have also found that some of the paints that my wife uses for her woodcraft hobbies (yep, I’m talking about tole paint) are also very good. The entire hull of the Royale is painted with Royal Blue craft paint. It spreads very nicely and it comes real thick, allowing me to thin to my tastes. The color is also very striking. On the negative side with these paints is that you need to make sure you seal it as soon as possible. I use a spray acrylic satin sealer. For all the guilding, I am venturing away from acrylic, using gold liquid leaf. It covers in one coat, looks fantastic, and I can polish it before I seal it.
Overall I’m happy with the results. I start the guilding on the other gallery and the balconies tonight, work on the longboat tomorrow, and wrap up little things here and there this weekend. Hopefully I’ll have the hull work done by mid-October. Working the hull is easy. The rigging will probably take me until next fall to finish. But, I won’t be starting on the rigging until late December. I’ll take a break when I get the hull done next month, and jump into my Heller La Reale.
I’ll get more pics up as soon as I make a little more progress
Beautiful paintwork Grymm, the blue and gold is a gorgeous combination. The full blue hull looks good as well. I’ll take some photo’s of my Soleil (never completed) and post them here.
So how far did you get on the kit? Talking with people who have it, those who gave up just got stuck on the rigging and abandoned it. I can’t do that. This kit is going to be completed. I basically re-read the rigging instructions every evening, making notes, and understanding it bit more every day. Once I’ve got the book “Ship Rigging in the days of the Spritsail Topmast”, I’ll be in perfect shape to rig this ship. I just have to pick up some extra rigging line for the lower stays and maybe some extra smaller lines, and dye the line that came with the kit.
Actually my story is rather silly. I had the hull complete and had started fitting the masts and shrouds when I bought a new house. During moving to my new house the remaining parts of the Soleil went AWOL so the model has been a sort of unfinished symphony for the last 16 (Yes, 16 !) years.[:(] I’ll try and get the photo’s up before the weekend (don’t expect fancy FSM backgrounds though ).
