Yes I Am (almost) A Pirate, Part I

Clearly, the title for that British 74 post came from Pink Floyd's song Another Brick in the Wall.    Since there are three parts to that song on the album, I guess you can choose for yourself which one it's from.  Personally, I'm more inclined towards part I than the more famous part II but that's just me.  This post title is a song from one of my favorite artists for many years (no, not Warren Zevon) and also describes the events of the day I'm writing about quite well.

Since it's October, that means it's time for another Broadsides! convention.  This year though, because of changes in the management of the Battleship Texas, we had to find another place for the convention at the last minute.  Fortunately, the convention organizer found another venue that is almost as good as the battleship:  The Houston Maritime Museum.

It is a small, but very nice facility and their website is: https://houstonmaritime.org/ .  Unfortunately, I did not take any pictures of their exhibits as I was busy running and playing games.  If, however, you are in Houston I recommend taking the time to visit.  They have a 1/48 scale model of HMS Victory that is so nice that I wondered if I could sneak it out under my shirt!  No, I didn't try. 🙄  What I will try is to go back and get some pictures, even if they are only of her.

Since the convention was starting over in a new location, I decided to revisit the scenario I ran from the very first Broadsides; a scenario I call "Jamaica Mistake."  It is a what-if scenario based on the idea that, instead of missing the Jamaica Convoy in the fog during the War of 1812, John Rodgers and his US Navy squadron find a section of the convoy.  All players are on the US side, and the object is to be the player with the largest amount of prize money when the scenario is over.  There are British escorts but they don't show up until after someone starts shooting.  Even then, the actual ship and its entry point are randomized so that I (playing the British) don't know exactly what I will get.

Since the scenario starts with a visibility range of 200 yards (6 inches), there are no ships on the table.  Instead, there are blinds that may or may not be a merchantman and the US entry is randomized for each ship entering on the table edge.  

Not as pretty as I'd originally hoped.

The idea was that each of those black rectangles would be wooden blocks, painted gray, with a discreet number on the back so I could match them to ships.  Well, since I waited till the last night to make them, my mini table-saw blade gave out.  I then discovered that I couldn't cut a straight line with a Dremel tool attachment.  Consequently, I got some craft foam out of the closet and used that.  

Not every one of those squares is a ship; in fact, only about half of them are.  The rest are shadows in the fog, false sightings and the like.  The only way for players to tell was to get within visibility range and actually see what is there.  To make things more fun, the visibility can change every turn.  In the Post Captain rules, you roll a D12 every turn and that is the visibility in yards.

There were only two players, so they drew their ships at random.  One player drew USS President and came in from the top short edge of the table.  The other drew USS Argus and came in from the opposite short edge.  

President from one short edge

Argus from the other

The first couple of phases (remember: for Post Captain there are three one-minute phases in a turn) were not good for either US player.  They discovered that some of the blinds were just empty ocean.  By the end of the blue phase though, they had started finding some targets.

Merchantman: "Oh.  Uh, hello."

I'm blaming any blurry photos on the "fog".  Yeah, that's it. . . .

Luckily for the Americans, the visibility went from 200 yards (6 inches) to 800 yards (24 inches) at the end of the turn.  This made everything but the center of the table visible, and let the commander of President realize that the entire convoy was coming right at him.

The fog begins to lift.

As the game sped up, my picture taking began to be a bit more erratic.  Everything that came within range of President decided that surrender was the wisest option, but the ship that Hornet sighted decided to try and run.  A single broadside from Argus was enough to make that merchant change her mind, but it also let the escorts know that something was wrong.  I rolled, and it would take one of the escorts three turns to reach the table.  Argus' merchantman had decided to surrender, but once the US captain saw the other ships ahead of him he simply sailed right past heading for the other prizes.

We wound up calling this a "naval drive-by."

At the end of this turn, another player came by a put down a Broadside Token. 

If a player puts one down, it lets him redo a die roll, or force another player to re-roll their dice.  If an onlooker puts one down, the game master has to modify something on the next turn.  As I was going crazy trying to keep my makeshift blinds associated with the right ships, I decided that next turn the fog would lift and everything on the table could be seen.

Over the next three turns, Argus kept chasing ships while President had so many surrendered ships around here that there was a bit of a traffic jam. 

In fact, President was in danger of running out of ship's boats.

"You bring that BACK when you're done, Midshipman,"

It was at this point that the Royal Navy finally put in an appearance.  The convoy was escorted by a 64, a 38 frigate and a brig.  My random die roll brought on the frigate, HMS Thalia.  Unfortunately for the Americans, she showed up behind President.  A third player joined in at this point, and wanted to run the British frigate, so I let him do it.

The watchdog arrives.

In our eagerness to start the real fighting, I didn't take any more photos.  Thalia got off a broadside before President could bring her guns to bear, and caused a rudder critical hit.  President  did manage to get turned though, and the two frigates had just settled down to pounding each other when we ran out of time.  All the players enjoyed themselves and said they would play the rules again, so I consider that a successful game.

I had planned on covering the entire convention in one post, but looking at the length of this one battle report makes it clear that I can't pull it off.  So, I'll talk about the rest of the games I played as part II.

Another Brick in the (Wooden) Wall

The title for the previous post is from the song "Workin' for a Livin'" by Huey Lewis and the News.  After I made the post, I looked the song up and discovered it was primarily a US hit instead of an international one.  So, apologies to any international readers I shortchanged.  Consequently, the musical reference in this title is so easy, I wouldn't even bother to give out a hint (well, if I gave out hints, which I haven't yet).  Let's just presume everyone got it, and move on.  Of course, for that one person who doesn't know the tune this title is riffing on, I will name it at the beginning of the next post. 😣

For the ship itself, there's not a lot to say really.  She's another British 74, of the Middling persuasion.  That means she measures between 173-175 feet on the gundeck, and normally carries 28 18-pounders on her upper gundeck.  This miniature will be representing one of the five Middling class vessels at Trafalgar.  I decided to paint her as a ship that is fresh out of the dockyard: whitish sails, no additional coloring or decoration other than stock.  My thought here is that perhaps her commander doesn't have a lot of extra money to spend on flashy decorations.  So, much like Captain Hardy in Victory, our fictional captain here took what he was given.

I haven't posted a picture with the Quarter of Comparison (TM) in a while.

The next few sailing ships up on the blog are going to be Spanish ones.  I recently made an order from Waterloo Minis (http://waterloominis.com/) that will allow me to finish my Spanish fleet for the Trafalgar Project.  If you're in the US or Canada and need to buy Langton miniatures, Waterloo is definitely the place.  Jeff is a great guy to deal with; if he has it in stock you'll get it, and if he doesn't he will let you know.  I trust him enough that when I order masts and sails, I'll tell him "I don't want X or Y, but any other setting is fine."  Given how finicky I am about my ships, that is high praise indeed!

I'm taking what they're givin' 'cause I'm workin' for a livin'

So, first things first.  The title of the last post was a line from the Dire Strait's song, "Industrial Disease."  Maybe a bit obscure for a first go, but this one should more than make up for that, at least for my US readers.

Now that the Greenpeace ships are finished, it makes sense that I need whaling ships too.  You might think that those would be hard to find.  Turns out, they are mostly quite easy.  The British company Tri-Ang Minic made a whaling factory ship named Vikingen, and a set of three harpoon ships to go with it.  Vikingen does tend towards the toy end of the spectrum, with its simplistic hull and toy masts; however, it is in 1/1200 scale and it looks close enough for game purposes.

The original ship

A model of the original

The Tri-Ang Minic model as usually found on eBay.  If you look closely, you
can see two of the plastic masts on the bow.

I wanted a more realistic paint job, so I put the model in a container with paint stripper.  It was here that I learned the funnels were plastic around a metal core.  I would need to find replacement masts and funnels too.  The paint stripper did work well though, and after a little scrubbing I had a hull that looked like this:

Fortunately for the project, there is a shop in the UK that specializes in replacement parts for ships like this.  If you need parts, or obscure models for whatever reason, I recommend http://waterline-ships.com/ .  He had everything I needed, including replicas of the harpoon ships, which are REALLY hard to find.  After putting the replacement metal masts in place, Vikingen looked like this:

I decided to put the funnels on after the ship was painted, as some of the clearances would be way too close to paint cleanly.  The biggest problem in painting was that, while there are exterior pictures of the ship, I couldn't find any pictures of what color her decks might have been.  I wound up using a picture of another factory ship model, the Sir James Clark Ross:

So, with no further ado, here is the repainted Vikingen:

While the picture and model of the prototype shows the forward and aft superstructures to be have open areas, I decided to go with just portholes instead.  I wasn't sure I could paint it in such a way as to look realistic, and I certainly wasn't about to try and start cutting holes in the model!  Given her beginnings, I think she looks pretty good.  Sharp-eyed observers will note that I didn't put the white stripe that is about halfway down the hull.  There's a reason for that, which I will explain later.

After the factory ship comes the harpoon ships.  As I mentioned earlier, these are really hard to find as originals, and come with prices to match.  Fortunately though, http://waterline-ships.com/ has got me covered there too, as he offers reproductions of them.  They come in two pieces: the hull and a funnel.  This is what they look like out of the package:

It's a bit basic, but given its background that's not really unexpected.  On the bright side, that means that they should be easy to dress up.  Another online search gave me some photos to work with for a color scheme:

Clearly, this paint job was never seriously considered.

So, the first thing my harpoon ships need are some masts.  That first picture shows a modernized vessel, so I decided to not even try to do radar domes or the radar mast on the wheelhouse.  I kept it basic, and used .20 music wire to make my masts.  Even that minimal addition made the ships look much better, but they still needed something else.  It took a while, but I finally realized that the "something else" was the walkway to the harpoon station.  I was out of plastic sheet, so cut them from a flap of a cereal box.  When placed on a base, that gave me an unpainted model that looked like this:

Looking much better . . . .

The models themselves are simple enough that there's no need for any masking, or other painting tricks.  With a fairly simple paint job, they can be done reasonably quickly, but still look pretty good.  Eventually there will be a third harpoon ship, but it's going to be painted just like these two.

I swear that the portholes don't look that bad in person.

Other than the third harpoon ship, this project is almost finished.  I still need to paint the whales, and make some markers for things like fire hoses, mooring lines, and graffiti for the side of the factory ship.  Yes, graffiti.  The protest players are able to gain bonus points by painting graffiti on the side of the factory ship.  When those little things are done, I'll put them in another, quicker post.  One thing I MUST do though, is to throw in a picture of the whale as I promised Stew I would do that.

This is the diecast whale that originally came with the factory ship.  They are not uncommon but can still be rather expensive.  Fortunately, http://waterline-ships.com/  makes replicas of this little fellow also.  He's only about 1/2 inch long, but that is still a 50 foot whale.  He is awfully generic, but there are some better whales out there from https://www.ships-and-more.de/ and I might upgrade to those later.

I would love to hear from some of my UK readers about these Tri-Ang Minic models.  There's quite a few of the factory ships left, so did anyone ever actually play with them?  I can understand the smaller ships and whales  getting lost over time; I'm more curious about whether anyone actually played with them as toys.

There's a protest singer singing a protest song , , , ,

Well it's taken a while, but I'm finally making some progress on the "Save the Whale!" game.  You might recall that I mentioned this one in my post entitled "A Long Spell in Drydock." If you want to refresh your memory, here's the link: https://mymodelsailingships.blogspot.com/2019/06/back-in-saddle-again.html .

I had to find some decal paper, as none of the craft stores in our area carry it any more.  So, after finding some, I printed up  my decals for the Greenpeace ships.  The one for Solo came out looking really well, and it's amazing how much of a difference it made.

The original

My model, before decals. . . 

and after.

Even I'm surprised at how much of a difference the decal made.  Now, the ship really looks finished.  Encouraged by this, I went to put the white logo on the side of Rainbow Warrior.  At this point I realized my mistake; I had bought clear decal paper, not white.  While that worked just fine on Solo, it obviously was not going to work on the other ship.  Rather than make the same mistake twice, I ordered some white paper online, and waited for it to arrive.

While Decapod's model of Rainbow Warrior on Shapeways is pretty good, I decided to modify it to more closely match the photos of the real ship.  Specifically, this photo:

After looking at this and some other pictures of the ship, I started modifying the model.  I took everything off the ship behind the superstructure.  Then, I installed a foremast and mainmast made out of .020 music wire.  This should make them resistant to breakage, and encourage gamers to be careful with them.  I made some changes to the forward deck area based on other photos not shown here, and put boats on her by using some of my GHQ small boats from sailing ships that I cut to the right length.  Finally, I used some small plastic rod to put the two square green items on the top of the wheelhouse.  Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures during the modification, but the ship went from this:

to this:

Not too bad, but she will look even better once the lettering is on the side.  It turns out that I didn't get the green of the logo to be an exact match for the hull color, but I realized at the beginning it wouldn't be perfect.

The white line below the letters is where I was not quite able to reach in with a brush and touch the edge of the decal up with green paint.  I think, though, that when I put the wake effects onto the base that will be covered.  Honestly, I'm not quite as happy about these as I was with ones for Solo.  It's still better than not having it, and it doesn't look quite as bad to the naked eye as it does here.

Of course, you can't have Greenpeace ships without the rubber boats to go with them.  As I mentioned in the earlier post, I had found some Zodiac boats on Shapeways that looked like this:

Well, they paint up pretty quickly.  The 4 I did took maybe 45 minutes tops. 

In looking at pictures of Greenpeace rubber boats (technically Rigid Inflatable Boats, or RIBs) there doesn't seem to be a standardized color scheme.  These four represent what seem to be the most common colors.  Although the black boat seems to look smaller than the others, they are all the same model.  I thought that was an interesting optical illusion.

And with that, the protest forces for my "Save the Whale!" game are done.  I guess the only question left is, "What's up with the title for this post?"  When I started the blog, I was stuck for a name, and my wife came up with what I'm using now.  Since I'm old enough to remember when "Come Sail Away" was a huge hit for the band Styx, I thought it would be funny if the post titles used lines from songs, or were a play on the lyrics.  So, I'm starting to do that with this one.  No prize for guessing who the artist and song are, because Google makes it too easy to find anything nowadays. 

Back In the Saddle Again

While looking through my computer, I realized that I have not worked on a sailing ship since October of 2018.  For a blog about sailing ships, that is clearly too long!  I also realized that my Trafalgar project has gone even longer without any progress.  The obvious thing to do then, is to finish another ship of the line that will let me make progress on both general construction AND my Trafalgar goal.

Fortunately, I have a British 74 Common hull that has been painted since, well, October of 2018 or thereabouts.  When I order hulls, I always order sail sets to go along with them so all the ship needed was to have the masts and sails painted and installed, rig the ship, and just like that she's done.  Yep, that's the plan all right.

The masts and sails went together quickly enough, and I decided to experiment with how I paint my sails.  This time, I went with a black basecoat, linen first coat, tan drybrushing and then a drybrushing of linen again.  Overall, they seem a bit whiter than I normally like, but I can justify that by saying that she recently broke out a new set of canvas.  I've finally found the right size drill bit for enlarging the mast holes in the hull (a #52 bit, which is roughly 1.6 mm or .0635 inches).  This lets the mast fit with only a little bit of sanding using 1200 grit sandpaper.  With everything glued together, it was time to work on rigging.

The standing rigging went quicker than I thought it would, given that I hadn't done any rigging for about 8 or 9 months.  From there I moved to running rigging, and things started to slow a bit.  Here, I was having more trouble getting things going.  I was having problem with weaving the running rigging in and out of the standing rigging for the first couple of steps.  After that though, things started moving along more quickly.  As I was starting on step 8 of the running rigging I was thinking to myself, "Hmmm, it's been a few months but I've still got it."  It was right about then that I dropped the ship.

Truth be told, it wasn't a long fall; just a few inches from my hands to the desk.  It was, however, a long enough fall to rip a string of filthy words out of my mouth.  Good thing I was home alone!  Just like in the past, the standing rigging did its job and made it easy to pull everything back into place.  Once I got everything straightened back up, THEN I saw the evidence that my standing rigging job wasn't as snazzy as I thought it was.  The mizzenmast stays were much too loose and saggy, and part of the mainmast stays were wrapped around other lines.  Aarrgh!!!!  And no, there are no pictures of this fiasco, for the obvious reasons.

There was clearly only one way to fix these problems, and that was to cut out the mizzen and main masts standing rigging to do them over.  That meant that I also had to cut out step 8 of the running rigging as well.  Before rerunning all that string, I first had to redrill the holes for rigging at the stern of the ship.  I normally use a .7 mm drill bit there, because of the several different lines that go through those holes.  Turns out, when I drilled the holes on this ship, I used a .5 mm drill bit instead.  No wonder I couldn't get all the running rigging to fit through there!

After all this repair work was done, the rest of the build went pretty quickly.  No really, it did; I guess I needed those mistakes to shake me out of my complacency.  So, with no further ado, here are some beauty shots of the newest addition to the fleet:

The masts are in line, but for some reason this photo makes them look unaligned.

Some of the standing rigging does look a little loose, but it shows up
more in the photo than in real life.

I SWEAR to you that those masts are aligned with each other!

This ship will represent either Swiftsure or Berwick in the French fleet for Trafalgar, as both those ships were British prizes in French service.  However, she is rigged as a standard British ship, as this will make her more useful in other scenarios.  Honestly, I have never had a player in one of my games comment on the differences in rigging, so it probably doesn't really matter.  Over the years though, I've built enough ships in the two different rigging styles that I'm not going to stop now. 🙄

A Long Spell in Drydock

I feel that I owe my readers a bit of an apology right at the beginning of this post.  In looking at the blog, I realized that it has been 3 months since I’ve posted anything.  I would like to plead that Real Life ™ has gotten in the way, but the truth is that I’ve just been both lazy and in a bit of a slump.  I haven’t been completely unproductive, but the shipbuilding has really slowed down.  There are a couple of reasons for this, and they are even remotely related to naval gaming.  I’ll explain below.

Out, out damned computer!

No, I haven’t had computer problems, although I admit that would be a great excuse.  Instead, I have fallen into the snare of computer naval gaming.  I recently bought a game called Rule the Waves by a company called Naval Warfare Simulations, or NWS.  You can find their website at: http://navalwarfare.net/.  The game lets you run one of the major European navies from 1900 to 1926.  You  perform the role of the Grand Admiral, in that you get to design ships, place them, and (eventually) lead them into battle.  The navies in the game are Great Britain (of course), Germany (ditto), France, Italy, Russia, Austria-Hungary, the US and Japan.  As an option, you can manage the Spanish navy, or even the Confederate States if you want to go a fantasy history route.  I say fantasy there because all of the game is alternate history; in no way are you entitled to replay the runup to WWI.  Alliances can be made and broken based on the tension level between the great powers, and it’s even possible for the UK and Germany to sign an alliance if things go just right.  It’s also possible for real-life allies to really go after each other: In one game as the US, I fought three different wars with France.  The game is quite addictive, and many times I’ve found myself saying “just one more turn” (which is a month of game-time) until I have almost seen the sun rise.

Designing ships is one of the most fun parts of the game.  The march of technology is not always relentless, and some things that worked out in real life may not in your game.  This is an option, and you can turn it off if you so choose.  It does add an extra level of uncertainty to the game though, and I for one highly recommend it.  You can design anything from a minesweeper to a dreadnought and can ask the computer to help you if you want.  Computer designs are not always the best though!  Occasionally it will deliver a design that is overweight or has other flaws.  This is a part of the game that can keep you enthralled for hours, as you try to deliver that perfect blend of firepower, speed and protection.  If you spend money on espionage, you will get reports from what the other navies are doing, and this can be used as a guide for your own designs.  I can assure you; it WILL hurt your ego when you find that your perfect design for whatever ship is either 1) completely inept compared to its foreign counterparts, or 2) will bankrupt your country if you try and build it.  While the game stops in the 1920s, NWS is preparing Rule the Waves II which will put aircraft carriers into the game along with other technologies.  Will I buy it?  Despite my dislike of aircraft in naval games, I daresay I probably will.  After all, it’s not as if I have to paint up any aircraft carriers or airplanes, right?!  Gaming navies are a lot of fun when they’re digital, even if they aren’t quite as satisfying as a fleet of painted miniatures.

Gamer Syndrome

I think we’re all guilty of this one.  You start on a project and intend to keep a laser focus on it.  Eventually though, you look at those ships and start wondering, “What else could I use these for?”  Next thing you know, you’ve got a new project that you never planned on.  The military world calls it “mission creep,” the medical world calls it “attention deficit disorder,” and we call it “gamer syndrome.”  Even worse, you find a new set of rules that look like they would be fun, and only need a few ships.  Just a few, and they are almost all available from somewhere like Shapeways.  So, you’re looking around for those few ships, and you find all other sorts of cool stuff.  One of [fill in the blank] would be fun to paint, just to do something different.  Hmm, look at those; they would be perfect companions to that one ship you bought.  Wonder what you could do with those?  Are there rules for . . . .?  As the singer Robert Earl Keen says, “the road goes on forever and the party never ends.”

All the above is a roundabout way of saying that I have been painting some modern ships of late.  Not many; as I said, I’ve been in a slump.  One of my projects was an attempt to save a mistake that I got from Shapeways.  You might remember that in an earlier post, I talked about a problem I have with one of the Rothesay class frigates I received from them.  At the time I misidentified her as a Leander class, but have since learned the error of my ways.   Anyway, this was the picture:

I figured that given the issues with this ship, I couldn’t really mess it up any more, no matter what I did to it.  So, out came the knife.  I put the gun barrels in the turret using .025 music wire, which I thought would be more sturdy than plastic rod of the same width.  I added an upper mast out of the same wire, primarily to discourage gamers from moving the ship by its plastic mainmast.  Cutting off that circular thing did cause me to lose some of the deck details there, but fortunately I was able to paint them in without it looking too bad.  Overall, the end result looks like this:

She didn't come out too badly, all things considered.

I decided to paint her up as HMS Yarmouth.  With this one and HMS Plymouth, that gives me all of the Rothesay class frigates that were present for the Falklands War.  Falklands, huh?  Well what do you know, Shapeways has almost all the ships necessary for that war.  One shop even has the Argentine carrier ARA 25 de Mayo.  Throw in a couple of modern naval rules, and suddenly I’m buying things like this:

Obviously, nowhere near complete, or even started yet.

That is a 1/1250 scale Triton miniature of HMS Hermes, the flagship of the British fleet.  Obviously I don’t have to tell my readers where this is headed. . . .  I don’t know how long it will take this Falklands project to come to fruition, but someday my group will be playing a modern naval campaign.  Right now, I just keep telling myself that it’s still cheaper than trying to fight WWIII in the North Atlantic.

Naval “War”gaming? 

For my other foray into naval gaming ADD, the explanation is a little simpler.  Briefly put, I’m blaming David Manley for this one!  A few years back, I played his “Save the Whale” game.  In that, the players take the part of either whale hunters, or activists trying to save the whale.  The activists get to do things like use speedboats to paint anti-whaling slogans on the side of the whaling factory ship, which will give them points (as will other actions) at the end of the game.  The points are only for the protesters because victory for the whalers is pretty simple:  If they harpoon a whale, they win.  Even if that doesn’t happen, they might still win if the protesters have negative points.  In effect, the whalers have won in the court of world opinion.

Ships for this are surprisingly easy to come by.  Triang-Minic made a whale factory ship, and those can be picked up pretty cheaply on eBay.  The harpoon ships are harder to find as originals but are being reproduced so that is also taken care of pretty cheaply.  I already hear you asking, “But Brian, where do you get protest ships?”  The answer of course, is Shapeways (or as I’ve come to call it, “The Great Enabler”).  A quick search using “Greenpeace ships” will turn up only 1 option.  A shop called shipshape makes the MV Solo, which served Greenpeace in the 1990s along with the Rainbow Warrior III.  However, Decapod, who makes the Cod War models also makes a model that is a very nice stand-in for the original Rainbow Warrior.  Turns out, there is even a shop that makes rubber Zodiac boats in 1/1250 scale. 

WAY more than I will ever need.  Then again, as small as they are I do expect
to lose a few over time.

The Quarter of Comparison (TM) is feeling somewhat shy today, and decided to
try and hide.

There actually a little oversize but otherwise are really nice models.  I decided to go with Rainbow Warrior I and Solo even though the two never actually served together.  After all, this is a fun game and I don’t think anyone is going to be too terribly offended by this inaccuracy.  Rainbow Warrior is probably so well known as to not need an introduction, but here’s a picture of the original in London:

My model of this ship isn’t even primed yet, but once it’s done I will update this post with pictures of it.  The rainbow and bird will probably be done via brush, but the “GREENPEACE” lettering on the side will have to be a decal.  I think a decal will be easy to make, and will look a lot better than any attempts to do it by hand.

The Solo is much less well known, but this is the original:

And here is my interpretation of her:

The model isn’t complete yet, as I haven’t finished the base or made decals for the name and Greenpeace logo on the side.   I also wasn’t able to do the sweeping rainbow stripes by brush, so went with a blockier interpretation, as you can see.  All in all though, I don’t think she looks too bad.

So that is why the blog has been laid up for a bit here lately.  It’s not that nothing has been done, but overall there’s been very little.  I promise to get back to the sailing ships soon.  After all, the Trafalgar Project isn’t going to get done if I don’t do anything on it!