HMS Victory and Le Redoutable at Trafalgar (1/300)

[GewoonWouter]

one gotta love these photos, with just the basic colours in place it already starts to come to life. Real Van Gils' magic

[Rui Matos]

Hi Marijn

The ships placed together to give us a sensation of what to come, it really really... but REALLY hints it will be an EPIC DIO!
Even with the ships still in "plain" colouring

Cheers and keep us posted (please)
Rui

[zs180]

It is very inspiring to see the ships painted. The colours just look right, especially in the light of recent knowledge about the actual paints used on HMS Victory. I am looking forward to see them weathered!

[marijn van gils]

Many thanks guys!
I'm also looking forward to seeing them weathered...

[Devin]

Marijn, glad to see they survived the trip home. It was really great to see them in person, as well as all of the rest of your work at World Model Expo.

-Devin

[marijn van gils]

Thanks Devin!
It was great to meet you and Kirsten too!
I hope I'll get to see some of your models on the next occasion. Taking them on a transatlantic flight is not so easy though... But who knows, maybe I'll get to come to the USA?

[Iceman 29]

Nice picture, can't wait to see the rest of the show, season II !

[Devin]

Thanks Devin!
It was great to meet you and Kirsten too!
I hope I'll get to see some of your models on the next occasion. Taking them on a transatlantic flight is not so easy though... But who knows, maybe I'll get to come to the USA?

Marijn, seeing your work in person was quite inspiring. As far as me bringing something to SMC next year, I've been sorting through my kits for something that's small enough to make the trip in hopefully one piece. We plan on flying into Berlin, then come to Eindhoven for the show, then on to Paris and possibly someplace else, so small is the key, and the transport rig/box will be considered from the start of the project.

[Neptune]

Looks very awesome and soooooooooooo crisp!

[marijn van gils]

Many thanks guys!

That sounds like a great trip Devin!
Small will definitely be easier indeed. Also, make sure you can take the model out of its box quickly and easily, so show the security staff (transparent plastic boxes can be helpful for this reason too). And make sure it is attached firmly inside the box in a way that the box can be turned upside down without damaging the model. If you do that, everything should be fine.


Now, finally an update, after some Covid-downtime, and some Flickr stuff.

I�ll be concentrating on the hull of Victory for some time.
Weathering was started with some different coloured filters.
I�ll show it in much enlarged close-ups, so hopefully you�ll be able to see the effects.

This is the basecolour I started from:


First, I applied a mottling of different coloured filters. It is a bit like the �oilpaint-dot� technique, but I apply them thinned like a filter:

First I flood the surface with clean White Spirit. Then I apply more or less random smudges of different coloured oil paints, which have been thinned down very much with White Spirit too. Then I blend those smudges with a clean brush, wetted with a little White Spirit. I take care not to mix all the colours together, because that would result in only one dirty brown.

For colours, I used an olive green, a red brown, a yellow and a blue. The idea is to change to basecolour subtly towards these different parts of the spectrum.

This is the result. The idea is to break up the plastic toy-like basecolour, creating some colour-variation.


This doesn�t work very well on very dark colours like (near) black). Those need light tones to break them up. So I repeated the process with two warm dusty tones: a light one and a very light one. I also applied it to the yellow and red areas, in order to unify everything a bit further. I blended some of it in a vertical streaking way, but not always.
The idea is not to mimic dust, but rather a mix of random fading, salt streaks and a little dust.


This effect may look very heavy and exaggerated now. But remember this is a very enlarged photo (a gunport is only 3 to 4 mm wide). And, very importantly, the effect will be toned down by the following painting steps, so we need to exaggerate a bit at this stage if we want it to have any effect on the final look.


After the filters, I also basecoated the shot holes. This was a matter of a fine brush, some Humbroll paint, and some patience. I will still add shadows and highlights to these later on; this is only a basecoat.



The same process on the stern.
Basecolour:


Red/green/blue/yellow filters:


�dusty� filters:


And shot holes:



And the bows.
Basecolour:


Red/green/blue/yellow filters:


�dusty� filters


Shot holes:



Again: the photo�s are close-ups. This one give more or less the �feel� of the entire model:


BTW, don�t pay attention to the area below the waterline; this will be very much overpainted later on.

[Iceman 29]

Great effect!

[JIM BAUMANN]

Wow! that is a lot of impact damage !!

certainly... very careful painting !

I am still a-watching!

JB

[Milan Kuliffay]

Marijn, that representation of the spots on the hull after being hit by cannonballs is done fantastically.

[maxim]

Now, Victory really looks battered!

I cannot answer this question myself: I would have thought that she would have been hit in the bow a lot, because of Nelson's normally suicidal tactic not cross the T, but to be crossed. In most battles, the fleet, which did that, lost terribly - Trafalgar is the strange exception. But the French-Spanish fleet had a lot of time to shoot on Victory before the British could answer the fire, therefore I thought as first ship of the line, she got have more hits in the bow bulwark...

[SG1]

Awesome, I've been waiting for this! Great effects, very effective ! Thank you for sharing your technique and Bravo as usual

[pascalemod]

Wow, what an impact the model has. And .. had.. because of all the holes.

Looks very realistic. Patience you have for this work is second to none.

[marijn van gils]

Thank you very much everyone!


Yes, the impact damage is pretty heavy. This is of course my personal interpretation, and I consciencely chose to err rather on the heavy side, in order to get the feel of such violent action.
I think in a diorama, �feel� and atmosphere are very important. Since I cannot really use the smoke and muzzle blasts as part of the violence, urgency and confusion of such a battle, I am using battle damage as one way to compensate.

I did of course take the events of the battle in account though.
I did put a lot of holes in the bows, caused by the approach to the French-Spanish line:


And not just in the beakhead bulkhead, but also in the bows below. Note that the shots were coming from the front.


But maybe, I could have put more?

BTW, in the above two photo�s, you can see that I have started shading the details (not finished yet!).


The starboard side (see my previous post) also has a lot of damage, similar to the bows, because that�s the side Victory will be alongside Redoutable. I guess only a couple of broadsides from such close range should cause some dents�

I �damaged� Victory�s port side much less. She is at that side only exchanging fire with Santissima Trinidad at longer range, plus maybe a couple of shots from Redoutable that went through-and-through.


Her stern has almost no damage, since she hadn�t been engaged from that side yet. I only did a couple of holes through the windows, that went in the starboard quarter gallery and out the stern.


Redoutable will have more contrast between both sides. She will be even more heavily damaged at her port side (alongside Victory), because of the larger number and higher rate of fire of Victory, and slightly lighter timbers of the French 74. But her starboard side will only have holes from shot that went through-and-through, so it will be less damaged than Victory�s port side.

It is fun to think and plan about this kind of stuff!

[MartinJQuinn]

Stupendous work! It's really mind blowing.

[zs180]

Wow! I wouldn't dare weather a sailing ship to this extent but it's just because I built my last tall ship before learning about the techniques
of weathering done convincingly. The result is nothing short of spectacular - something I have never seen before on any sailing ship model.

[marijn van gils]

Many thanks Martin and Gy�rge!

But it is not finished yet!
There are still some painting effects to come, and of course the damaged look will be complemented with rubble and torn sails and rigging.

It seems most builders of sailing ships are rather hesitant to include battle damage in their models indeed. Which I totally understand when one is not placing them in a diorama setting. And there are not too many diorama's being built with them, especially battle scenes.
Upside: I get to build something relatively unique. Downside: there is not much inspiration to be taken from other models out there for the battle damage/weathering...