River Boat No.3

I was rummaging through some boxes in my workroom/office recently and found again the other river boat that I'd made.  It's approximately 1:72 scale and I had called it 'Marlene' (written underneath) with the date April 1993.  It needs a wee bit of repair work though (not to mention painting).

It is actually based on an illustration used for the cover of the Penguin Classics edition of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (mine is the 1988 reprint).  The illustration is by someone called F Hens (I couldn't find anything about him on the internet - I'm presuming it's a 'him' - although there were plenty of results about poultry), being a detail of a painting entitled 'The Steamer Stanley', presumably on the Congo or somewhere.

I did try it out with my recent Copplestone Darkest Africa figures (see earlier posts on this blog) but it is a little small.  28mm figures weren't really on my radar when I built it, obviously.  Maybe it's not small though, maybe it's just far away...

Construction techniques were my usual balsa off-cuts for the hull with cardboard superstructure held up with matchsticks.  I remember being rather pleased with the paddle wheel at the back (matchsticks and thin card) as I'd made it match the waterline.

Yet again, another lesson on the importance of knowing one's literature.

ACW Adventures in Basing No.2

It's funny how a small change can upset all the best laid plans of dice and men.  The particular change I am referring to is that one of my team at work (I sort of 'manage' a team of ecologists) left to join another company (allegedly for a 70% uplift, illustrating nicely how little we are paid generally and how in demand marine ecologists are these days) and that has meant that I have been a lot busier than I had planned or wanted to be for the past few months.  But, I shouldn't complain - at least I've still got a job....

Anyway, that explains the lack of posts recently.  However, I have managed to get a little further with the ACW project I'd set myself and have started on basing up Geoff's Confederates.  As you can see they are also Airfix (mainly) but with a little more application of paint than my Union army.

I haven't flocked these ones yet but thought it might be of interest to see what the bases (30x40mm MDF) looked like just covered with the shelly sand I'd been using.  As you can see there is quite a variation in texture and colour with the odd larger shell fragment thrown in.  With the shell fragments (which can be quite pale) I usually paint these to look like wood or other debris.  In addition, I've added some small stones that came from a sample pack that one of my landscape architect colleagues didn't need anymore.