The Ship Model Forum

Thanks guys!



Base layer done, all planks painted in. The deck edge details were touched up in the base colour and bollards and steam winch positions in black. The colour of the chains is typically hull colour and one shot from 1940 shots the starboard chain to be a bit lighter, so I copied that to add some variation, in AP507C.

Great work Evert-Jan!

Of course the deck looks exaggerated now, but you are right that this will blend in nicely after a couple of washes. Many modellers make the mistake of starting too subtle, only to see their paint-effects disappear when they add other layers of paint.
Also the different colour of chain will look more natural after some weathering.

Indeed, washes may blur out all contrast. This recipe I practiced on scrap but still, results vary. This happened a bit with the center and quarterdeck; next model I'll do the deck in one pass (my next subject probably will not have a deck at all but soit). I may add a pass with some lighter/darker planks at a lost evening hour to correct these older decks? Anyway, focus on this part first.



Three washes of van Dyk brown followed. I used Winsor & Newton's Sansodor that dries very slowly, allowing for some touching up and clearing excess wash from the deck with a wet brush when the wash is starting to set. There's always some discussion if individual planks can be seen and the answer is clearly: it depends. The contrast is perhaps more pronounced than I'd like but I'm happy with the results. Now I have to touch up the hull colour base layer and start adding some pin filters; adding shadows is next (and may take a bit of time).

Wow, that deck is perfect. Regards, Pete in RI

That's beautiful

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That looks beautiful EJ!

With painting, always remember that it not the real thing. Is is a piece of plastic 350 time smaller. It will always be YOUR interpretation of the ship...

A work of art, love it. Looking forward to more updates.

Brilliant.

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Wow. She looks sharp.

Thanks all! The wash dried up very nicely. The darkest planks are a bit more visible than on the quarterdeck and below the boat deck. I'll give the latter another pass, otherwise the contrast is gone when the superstructure is added. Perhaps later. I started adding pin filters and shadowlines (aka marijnating the model). It's tricky to add these lines to the breakwater with such a huge subject that you cannot hold and rotate to get the best angle; you have to work around it.... painting tiny lines brushing over the bow with the tip of the brush 10cm in front of my hand... moving between all the small supports at the back.... great fun.... Remarkably few parts have broken off so far.

Still wondering it I should shadows first and then salt deposits or the other way around I'll experiment a bit on B-barbette...

It depends a bit on the quantity, the way in which you apply the salt stains, and your personal preference.

If you apply a lot, especially if you let the thinned paint run over the surface, it will collect in recesses and destroy any shadows you painted there.

So, there is a technical logic in applying the salt stains before the shadows.

But this can be avoided if you only apply locally and keep the amount of paint on your brush low. For this, wipe the brush on your palette or on a paper towel untill the thinned paint only stains the surface you touch with the brush.

And there is an artistic logic in applying salt stains after the shadows. Painting the shadows is a general effect all over the ship, and it provides a better feel for the rest of the paintwork to follow. Since salt stains is usually a rather subtle and more local paint effect, applying them after the shadows allows you to get a better feel where and how much salt stains to apply for the whole to look good.

And the good news: any destroyed shadows can simply be repainted after the salt stains dry... That may feel like a bit of waisted time, but I think it's an estabished fact by now that you're not scared of putting in a couple of extra hours!

Anyway, experimenting is a good idea, so you can find out what works best for you!

I was going for shadows-first, correction later. I noticed you applied some heavy "dusting" on Lexington (bridge) where it collects in corners, but adding shadows also moves the entire dust layer one level lower optically ruining the effect.... In any case, if I have some staining on the decks it makes sense to have it on top of the caulking lines... We'll see, I think it will get this appearance like I knew what I was doing at the time

beautiful "parquet" your paint job is very consistent
well done
cheers
Nicolas

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The fwd breakwater and anchor arrangement after one pass of shadows, sediment deposits & salt streaking followed by highlighting. This will be by far the dirtiest part of the ship and the only part with sediment (Humbrol 62 Leather).



I copied using H148 Radome Tan for salt streaks/deposits; this is a yellowy tone but dries up as a very natural whitish filter.

"Some" correction work is to follow on the highlights (the angled base on the skylights and top of the capstans) and the bollards are a bit overdone. The shadows and highlights of the fwd breakwater near the deck was particularly challenging... Some salt deposits on the deck appears a bit flaky too, so perhaps add more, restore deck lines afterwards... This was fun to do with mood swings from " this is actually really easy" to "that didn't turn out as I want it at all" and back.

That looks great Evert-Jan!

Indeed, dust in nooks and crannies doesn't go together with shadows. So, you have to choose carefully where to let the dust gather and where to keep the shadows.
One thing that can guide you is the amount of contrast you can get. Dust creates a lot of contrast on dark surfaces, while shadows create more contrast on light colours. So, applying dust works better on dark items than on light items. And light items often work better with shadows, because dust would be nearly invisible on them.

You have done this already: the bollards are very dark, causing shadows not to give much effect here. But the dust does!

On the photographs, I don't find the effect on the bollards exaggerated at all. Looks great to me!
Don't forget to take some distance sometimes and consider the model as a whole, and how the effects look like that.

You could just add a couple of small touches of rust to the bollards to add some variation. Maybe the anchor chain could use a little too? Not too much, just a little wash here and there.

I also like how the dust looks on the plates below and next to the anchor chains: nicely lived in!
And I think it adds a lot to the deck too, breaking the 'clean parquet' effect and giving it a more realistic look.
I like how you achied good variation with both hazy areas with soft edges and spotty zones with harder edges.

For further variation on the wooden deck, you can add dark dirty spots too. That is exactly the same as what you did now, but with a very dark brown. That way, you'll have dirt creating contrast in 2 directions: light and dark. Both together offer more variation and effect, but remain sufficiently subtle to remain realistic.

With the dirty dark spots, I mean something like this:








But you can of course also keep it more subtle, and/or add larger areas but with a more transparent effect, etc.

Thank you for the feedback! I am now indeed in the "sit back and watch" mode for a few days and see how I like what has happened. The bollards were planned to have some rusty wash, for the chains I'm a bit on the fence. These were regularly painted and cleand when hoisted aboard... but now they also appear a bit too backgroundy in terms of colour and lack contrast.

I'll try giving the dust (salt) a few more passed on the deck and try keeping it stubble, perhaps with some repair of the caulking once done. Of course salt would settle on the caulking but if it visually appears to interrupting then it's no good. In the corner of the breakwater near the scupper it's just was I wanted. Radome tan was a very good tip; it has the right effect without a yellow tone. Deck spots are indeed a good suggestion too to unbore the deck further. The spots on your Amagi shed roof is indeed a good example! I do miss not being able to rotate the model but having to work around it, but it is excellent practice...

That looks fantastic. While I've never be the model builder either you or Marijn are, this type of stuff inspires me to get work harder on achieving more realistic weathering on future builds. Thanks for sharing your work.

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Thanks Martin. I always enjoyed looking at well-weathered models and have a few magazines on painting armor and a few on figures. The dot filtering and shadow-highlighting that Marijn has applied to his Lexington & Amagi build (ignoring all the other tricks for now ) were inspiring and worked really well in 700 scale so I though why not? I really like to combine these new approaches and stop just applying a wash & drybrush on everything. Now I feel more confident that all that tiny detail will pop up, though I have to experiment a bit more. It's a bit scary to experiment on a model you've been working on since the Big Bang, but I decided to just let go and continue. Now I just focus on one part of the model and continue until it is done; working on all parts at once is just too much. I know some modelers avoid larger ships or think a Pontos set is a lot of work (it really isn't if all the design work and parts are made for you... ); but getting something done has its advantages... but my, when you are carving & painting the deck this model is soooo large....

Next project will be something much smaller... before I do another battleship again...

With our (Dave Weldon's) new rediscovery of things that were once forgotten, namely corticine on the shelterdeck (or boat deck), I started adding corticine strips. From the expansion slot (running between the funnels) I added a 6x12 ft pattern than matches pictures of the pattern well, using stretched sprue. Stretched sprue over such long distances is tricky; lot's of measuring, locally fixing and correcting...



Status as this section is now; nearly done with the stripe pattern. Some detail needed to be removed, some detail removed itself. There is no stripe pattern near the fw 4" HA emplaced and the ladder hatch coaming; here Semtex was added. If Semtex was added at the pompom emplacement is not known, so the corticine strip pattern was added there as well.