Model took about six months to build. A lot of scratch building was involved including two main towers, and paltforms completely scratch built. The mid ship superstructure and main parts of superstructure were scratch built.. Other modifications include the skirting to all main gun turrets and gun barrels. Super detailing and reshaping ship's funnel structure, capstans and surrounding equipment on the bow of ship was scratchbuilt. The photo etchching for the ship's three cranes, two midships and one in the rear was detailed. The main columns of cranes were scratchbuilt. The aircraft catapults were also replaced with photoetch. My own paint mix utilized after many futile attempts to get the desired  correct  hue. Various washes and glazes and diifferent gradings of the basic colour  applied to achieve the end  result. Seascape was sculpted with tissue paper and Tetrion and painted with wet on wet blending of greens, blues and black.. All in all, this beautiful famous lady was a joy to build. There was a lot of work done to enhance the model, but the end end result was well worth it.

Click here to see the in progress shots from a few months ago.