WIP? Advice appreciated, Please.

Modeling Subjects Ships
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This is my first attempt in a few years, and my first attempt at a ship model. I know its not a very complicated model, but being

A: Not a subject I’m used to, and

B: Quite a bit larger than I’m used to,

I thought I should ask for some advice. oh and its my first WIP also, but being a new user of photobucket, I figured why not. This is what I’m working on.

This is what I have so far

I know I’m deviating from the “Jolly Roger” a bit with the colors. I “think” I did ok with the deck. Right now I am planning on having the masts white, I’m not really sure how accurate that would be for sailing ships of this period, well as much as a model inspired by the movie peter pan could be accurate to begin with…

What I’m really not sure on how to proceed with ATM is on the hull. I have it blue and gray, but I wasn’t sure if I should use some brown wash on it then highlight back up with the blue and gray to add a bit of depth and possibly some weathering. And wow, I never realized just how much worse the pictures look than the actual model. All the pics I’ve seen that seemed just “ok” must have been really awesome to see in person. I thought mine looked passable, but my pics make me look pretty bad.

Anyway, any tips, advice, or comments is appreciated.

-Random Extra-

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You have nothing to worry about.

The only thing I’d say is that you need to write a story, even if just for yourself, about whats the history. And go from there.

As for mast colors, it ain’t the Navy.

Go with natural wood and have some fun with toothbrush techniques to get grain.

As an example:

“When Captain Rextra keeled the ship on the beach in Surinam, following that unfortunate incident with the unlocked rum cabinet and the subsequent violence, the crew took the opportunity to fell several large cashew trees to replace the masts that had been damaged by the fire.”

ARRGGGGGGHHH!!!

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Random,

You are doing a fine job on the old Disneyland Chicken of the Sea. Although, if this is bigger than what you usually work on then all I can say is dang!

As GM said, this ain’t the Navy, so if I was building her, I would paint the mast a wooden color with a dark brown wash, along with the yards. As for the ship itself, I like your color pallet and yes, I would do a wash. The deck looks great, and if you were going to wash it too, I would suggest a light gray to show some bleaching effect from the sun and salt water. But not too much as again, this ain’t a British or American naval ship, so I would seriously doubt that these buccaneers would be holystoning said deck.

Grey primer and pictures are a great way of catching issues. Keep up the good work, post pictures and ask questions, the people who inhabit this forum are fantastic. And by the way, welcome aboard!

Steve

I have built this model twice since returning to modeling with my boys.

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Looks great!

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First and foremost,have fun.Deviation is a good thing.

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That deck color looks great. Please post some more pictures!

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I didn’t get much time to actually work on the ship this week, I guess I should give it a name at some point. I all ready filled off the “Jolly Roger” form the back end, the stern? My original thought was to attempt some freehand on the name, and make it all fancy and swashbuckley. Anyway, I used some brown wash on the sides, but since I’m used to 28mm heroic scale figures, I didn’t do too great of a job on it. Then I used some black wash to try to darken up the areas that I thought would have been grimey. that too did not turn out as I wanted. so I went back over everything with their original colors, using a not quite drybrush method. I removed most of the paint like drybrushing, but the brush was still wet so it still noticeably applied the paint, but it hopefully left the recessed darkened with the wash.

Unfortunately I only took two pictures, and I don’t remember what stages I took them from.

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Well you did an awesome job on the skull and cross bones. You might want to check out some of David_K’s builds. He definitely has a lock on using the wash/weathering technique and I am sure he would gladly answer a PM.

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I really like what you are doing here.

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I’m pretty sure these pics were from right after adding the brown wash. I was thinking of going back over all the detailing on the stern to try and lighten it up, but it’s been sitting on my table for just over a year, due to my indecision on how to proceed, and I just really want it done. well, good looking would be great too.

It seems like every time I look at her, I find new parts I want to paint differently or paint more, and its really gotten to me, as I feel like this is taking forever.

hopefully tonight after i plant a few shrubs in the yard I can basecoat the masts, and have some progress.

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I gotta say, I’m really enjoying how easy it is to use photobucket in conjunction with my phone. After the kids opened up all their Easter goodness, and we stopped by Lowes to see what shrubs were on sale, I finally got to prime the masts and mast type stuff. Originally I had planned on using white so the colors would be a little more bright and vibrant, but apparently sitting in a box for 5 or 6 years doesn’t work so well for cans of spray paint.I couldn’t even finish one pass with the white before it clogged, and kept right on clogging no matter what I did to clean the nozzle out. so I opted for my ultra flat camouflage tan color. it was either that or wait till tomorrow and go to the store. wow this picture makes it all look gray. you can see the 4? masts I have all ready assembled, those masts alone cause me all sorts of headache as each one was covered in flash, depressions, and all sorts of other deformities, that I had to scrape, file, and sand off. Hopefully now I can move right along and finish things up once and for all.

on the plus side, I am looking forward to the smaller details, as I hope I’ll be a little more comfortable with the smaller pieces, as opposed to the large areas of the hull. I should have some pics up later tonight after dinner.

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Hey all,

I did get a little bit done after dinner, mostly just figuring out which colors to use on the masts, and I think I have one done.

After I primed everything this was my first choice for a base color.

It seemed a little too yellow. so after a little tinkering I wound up with this. (and I forgot to take pictures throughout the whole process.again)

Yes it is on a napkin. I thought the white background might show the color better than the brown tray.

And here it is on the ship next to the other primed masts.well, thats it for tonight. As always any comments are welcome and appreciated, as well as any advice (I know I need it)

Good night all, and Happy Easter!

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That mast looks pretty good. Just do the others the same way and you’ll have one fine ship coming along.

A little tip for photo taking. It seems that a piece of medium blue poster paper makes for a good background. About the color of the “Use rich formatting” words under the box you write replies to posts in. I’m not near my workbench right now but I think they are about 18" X 24" or close to it. Shows up the colors a lot better. My [2cnts].

Hope that this helps.

Jim [cptn]

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Not much to complain about from my POV. Doing a very nice job…Cheers mark

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got the base coat on the rest of the mast (masts? masti?..) well however you say the plural version of mast… mastee? non of that sounds right. curse my poor vocabulary. I’ll probably only make a little bit of progress for a few days, then next week I work night shift, so even less. figuring out the colors for the mast was the hard part. now that I have a wood color I like, I guess I could go back and redo the railings and what not, but I am far too lazy. maybe someday in the future…

Fox: I think I have some blue foamcore or construction paper left over from one of the kid’s school projects floating around somewhere, and I’ll definitely give that a try next time.

Surfsup: Thanks, I keep second guessing myself about how things are turning out, so I appreciate it.

Now, if I could just get the plastic sails to paint themselves I’d be set. it seems like everytime I google it or search on this forum, the main suggestion is to replace the plastic with some cloth, which is not going to happen. So if anyone knows a good technique, please let me know. so far i have failed at drybrushing, and tomorrow I’m going to try to mix light gray and white, and layer it as I add more and more white.

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Fine looking little ship!

Suggestion for the name: “Poulet de la Mer”.

Masts.

Cloth is too much trouble. Try typing paper. Get the good stuff- it’s usually called bond. Cut a bunch of strips about 1/2" wide. Soak in water until they are saturated. Using your plastic sail as a form, put the strips on it with a slight overlap and wipe them down with diluted Elmers from the front as you go. Strips go top to bottom. Make sure you get enough on to seal the edges together but try not to let it soak through too much.

Let dry, peel off and paint.

You’ll mangle the first couple, but it’s fun easy and sloppy work.

I find that rationing a little rum (rationing? We don’t ration to pirates!!) helps a little.

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Hello again!

I know its been a few months, summer is pretty busy for me at work, and I have not had much time to do any modeling at all :frowning:

What I did do was to attempt your suggestion GMorrison, I used the one plastic sail I had as a base and traced out an outline of what I thought each sail should look like. I did use the great mystic powers of Google as a guide to approximate the designs. Then I used a permanent marker to trace the outlines onto a balloon so that the sails would be slightly concave ( I think concave is the right term) anyway like it’s catching the wind.

unfortunately I had the balloons hanging to dry when I left for “summer camp” for my obligatory 2 weeks a year. upon my return the majority of them had dried out and fallen off the balloons. Here’s the ones that didn’t break.

They seem to be a bit brittle. I may need to dampen them to work on. anyway the “yardarms?” all have plastic sails molded onto them, shaving plastic sprue into shape is overly time and effort consuming, so I’m just going to use some toothpicks for the smaller yards and my wife had some larger drink umbrella things that I was able to cut and shape into the appropriate size for the main top yard and the mizzen yard.

I am going to put the sails on hold for a bit though as I realized the rigging is going to be everywhere and I haven’t’ even placed the cannons and other deck details, which seem like they will be easier to do first. All right, I’m off to paint some Cannons! Wish me luck. As always all advice tips and critiques are all welcome, and I look forward to hearing them.

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the reason they fell off the balloons is they did not get their ration of rum while you were away for 2 weeks.

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DDP59, I can see them jumping off the wagon, but i wish they didn’t jump off the balloon. I couldn’t find half of the original sails. I’ll just have to be more liberal with the consumption of all things tasty and bad for you.

I only got a handful of hours to get any work done tonight. I so wanted to slap some paint on the cannons, wheel, and bell. maybe try out some non metallic metal, but if i understand it correctly, its easier on a larger area, because you can get more layers and gradation applied. so this ship’s cannons are a bit too small for a first time attempt.

So I clipped the parts out. and in this pic they look brownish, but this is the same primer that appeared light gray/tan in other pictures.

Instead of getting to splash on some shiney paint like a caffeinated squirrel with ADD, I instead removed the flash, mold lines, and drilled out one of the barrels.

Not nearly as exciting as I was expecting, but its gotta be done.

As much as I’ve been intimidated by rigging and sails on this project, I was looking forward to putting together the Ecto-1 by AMT, until my son got me this for my birthday.

The box looks beat, and like it was sitting in horribly conditions for quite some time, but upon closer inspection inside the box, the model looks brand new. I foresee many sleepless nights in my future.

anyway, good night. As always I appreciate all feedback, criticisms, tips, and pointers.

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With a pirate ship or any non-navy ship you can get away with anything. Patches on the sails are a nice touch. Many pirate ships were former merchant ships that were stolen, and as far as painting is concerned the ships were frequently disguised.