All Aboard!

It's been two months since my last blog post, and in that time Summer, work and general distraction has kept me away from doing pretty much any painting. My orcs aren't basecoated, let alone fully built, and the Corsairs of Umbar still haven't made an appearance.

Still, this week, with a few days' holiday taken just 'cos, I revisited a project that had been on the back burner for a while – The Usurper, pride of the Umbar fleet.

Over a couple of days, I got the thing from basecoat to finished (feeling appropriately guilty for leaving it so long). Like all my painting, it's a really simple affair – dark brown all over, with the deck drybrushed in khaki and details picked out, and then a wash all over. A bit basic, but it does the job, and suits the feel of a hard-used pirate vessel. The poop deck rails did get a bit of colour – red – in order to visually tie in with my Umbar forces and just to give it a bit of a lift.

All told, not displeased at all, and a pretty successful first real modelling project. The sail came out a little more dark than I expected, but not enough that I want to go back and repaint it!

The 'planking' on the base Playmobil ship's hull is far too wide to really suit, and I thought that it would really annoy me once the ship was painted. Happily, however, it turns out that it looks alright (the minimal highlights actually work in its favour there).

Hands down my favourite element, though, is the scratch-built ladder. Given how vague I am with scaling for most of the vessel (the hold door being a prime example), I'm a little surprised I bothered to build it, but I do really enjoy the end result. The ship's wheel looks good, but I do wish that I'd stuck to my guns and built a rail around it – right now it looks very exposed, and I think that drawing some more attention to the quarterdeck wouldn't have been a bad idea.

Still, I could fuss over it ad nauseum, so will leave it as is for now. Pirates, be they historical or Tolkienesque now have a ship of their own. Of course, what they don't have is a home port, but that's a project for another day...