by George A Georgopoulos
1/700 Bismarck (Trumpeter)
This is an out of the box with PE Build; no scratchbuilding. The camouflage time frame would be circa the May 5 1941 inspection. Though I attempted the Baltic stripes on the superstructure, I botched their relative widths, as the side shots show.
She is depicted building up speed in moderate seas. Actually, a more appropriate name for this build would be: My first water, with a model on it, It would reflect more accurately the distribution of the energy that went into this build.
The foundation of the water is the side of a wooden wine box, on which a piece of styrofoam was glued with white glue; tape was wound around the perimeter. A hole was carved on the styrofoam to accept the full hull of the ship. The underlying wave pattern was made by applying pressure on the styrofoam with a large cylindrical appliance. The surface detail was made from toilet paper dipped in white glue. I must say that the method proved very forgiving, as it allowed me to undo various areas countless of times just by diluting them with water. The main sculpting instrument used was an old, number 6 paint brush, with rather hard bristles, with which I hit the toilet paper mush.
The silent waves diverging from the hull were rendered by gluing a piece of wire on the surface in the direction of the wave and then building toilet-paper and white glue around it.
For the bow wave, a piece of paper was cut and glued with white glue for the basic curvy shape and then TP/white glue rendered the foam.
The surface color was painted with Life Color acrylics (mixing LC35 French blue, LC10 dark blue, UA055 bright green and UA51 black green). Nothing scientific here. Just prepared a mix until it looked ok and then reapplied, lighter and darker mixes, painting various areas until I was happy with it. Layers of white glue were applied on the painted surface and then some more painting on top of that gave some perception of depth.
The lighter shades around the hull were rendered by dry brushing white and then, on top of that, dry brushing the surface color. The process was again easy to correct if things went awry, by alternating dry brushing white and surface color.
Although I was apprehensive of attempting a seascape at first, it was lots of fun, and now I am hooked on putting my future models in the water. I think the texture of the surface, though admittedly out of scale for 1/700, looks nice especially if viewed from an angle where it reflects light.
PE is the dedicated WEM set plus the WEM anti-aircraft set. This build is also my farewell to the small scales; in an effort to relieve the eyestrain I will be moving to 1/350.
