And now, some more thin lines! A lot more thin lines…
I painted the planking effect, like I did on Victory.
This is the blank canvas:
I like to make the plank seams ‘heavier’ around the battle damage. It seems logical that the seams would have opened up more because of the impact forces, and it seems to work well visually.
Therefore, I start from the battle damage, painting a shadow line around on of the impacts.
The techniques, materials and colour are exactly the same as the shadows and the tromp-l’oeil details. After all, this is just another trompe-l’oeil detail…
The lines are not feathered with the clean brush yet.
Next, I paint the plank seams that are in contact with the impact. I make them quite dark by not thinning the paint too much. Of course, I have them continue through the impact area too.
Now, I refine both the lines and the shadow around the impact with a clean brush slightly moistened with White Spirit.
Now, I add the next line. In this case, I opted to make it a little fainter, especially on the left which is further removed from the impact. I did this by using the same colour, but simply thinning the paint more.
And this line is refined too:
Lines can painted even fainter, and don’t need to continue all the way, like I did with the lowest seam.
Finally, I shaded the rest of the impact.
Next, I repeat this on the nearby impact area:
With the heaviest seams done, this provides a kind of ‘roadmap’, which makes it easier for me to determine where and how dark/light to paint the remaining seams.
The black areas also receive plank seams. But because dark shadows don’t contrast well with dark base colours, I paint them with light colours, mimicking the highlights.
I used the darkest dust colour I used for filters earlier (which is still pretty light), mixed from Abt 503 Flesh and Dust.
After this has fully dried, I added highlights under some of the shadow lines on the ochre areas, and shadows above some of the highlight lines on the black areas. I painted these only here and there, to avoid making the effect too heavy. The application is the same as with the previous lines.
I also highlighted the impact areas.
At this point, I only had ‘large’ areas of impact splintering, but no tiny ‘chips’. With the plank seams in place, I find it easier to determine where to place these small chips for best effect, so I kept them until now.
I painted them with the same Humbrol base colour (72) as the large impact areas, and added a shadow above and a highlight below each.
And as a final weathering effect, I painted dirt streaks with raw umber oil paint. I will add some rusty streaks coming down from the shroud chains later, after those chains are added.
Many people paint streaks by applying a dot of undiluted oil paint, then ‘pulling’ it down with a clean wide brush.
I prefer to paint the entire streaks as precisely as possible with thinned oil paint, then refine and feather the edges as needed. So basically the same technique again as the fine lines…
I find this gives me much more control over the final appearance of the streaks.
In the photos above, you have seen only the starboard side of the Redoutable, which was at that point unengaged in the battle. So, it shows only a couple of shots that went through-and-through.
But her port side is being pounded heavily by Victory, so the battle damage is much heavier:
BTW, this technique for painting seams can be used to mimic the seams of metal plates on steel warships too:
http://www.modelshipgallery.com/gallery ... /index.htmI didn’t add highlights for these though, except when I wanted to mimic a raised edge.
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