Thanks for the nice comments, guys. It means a lot to me. As much as I enjoy working on the project, reading that my efforts are actually paying off is a boost to morale.
So here's the next update as promised: the ship is finished.
All I did was paint it black and then lightly spraying white on top of the ship. After that I just washed it with various browns. In the end I put a very light drybrush with sand color on top of it.
I fiddled around with the sail and rigging. Originally the sail was a little bigger but painting a white sheet of paper with a very watery color makes it shrink a little. I then painted the dragon on it, after drawing it with pencil. I was think of various other things to paint on the sail but a dragon has the right mixture of aggressiveness and goes well with pirates. Of course in Tolkien's books the sails should be black but that would make the ship model too dark in my opinion. So I took the liberty to keep the sails whitish.
So here's the happy bunch of corsairs off to do some mischief.
Okay the ship looks overcrowded but I wanted to see how many miniatures fit on it. 22 if I counted correctly, which means 2 corsairs will have to swim.
Looking at the photo you will understand why I chose a very small sail for the model: that way the sail would not interfere with any miniatures on deck. It might look unrealistic but I find that a reasonable compromise between "looks and playability".
Here a little detail of the helmsman. I originally wanted to put a steering wheel on the ship but two facts spoke against it: first the hobby shop that had all the neccessary ship model supply closed down and second it would have looked too modern for my taste.
And here a detailed shot of the bow. I haven't found an anchor yet. I might add one later. Or maybe not since I want models to be able to stand on deck which means I have to be carefull with too many details.
I am well aware that this ship looks a little beat uo and shoddy and of course highly unrealistic but the idea is of course to have something that just might fit into a fantasy setting. So all in all I am quite happy with my little ship here and as far as I can tell so are the corsairs who are about to set sail and go north...
31 July 2012, 12:33:19 PM
