I wanted to talk about how I am doing drawing. Frank Fox constantly says that when doing a ship drawing, do an "inboard profile" first. That is, draw a cut-away of the deck and equipment arrangements, in the interior. From this, you can then do a "real" exterior drawing. This applies to any sort of warship, sailing or 20th Century.
I am currently sketching the deck and gunport arrangements, and then do the exterior drawing on top of that (in pencil). I ink that and erase the "helping lines" with a kneaded eraser.
Another tip is that I make heavy use of scanner, graphics program, and printer. When I have a well-proportioned ship, I will copy that in the graphics program (after scanning). I turn on grid lines with 0.1 inch spacing. Then, I will "resample" to resize the drawing. Note that I am just using a copy, not the original image. I will scale the drawing to the size I want, and then do a "print preview" to check the size. I use the Corel PhotoPaint 8 graphics editor, and it provides such a feature. It shows size information in inches. I can then adjust my scaling, if I did not get the results I wanted.
Another feature of the print facility, is that I can size the picture, by adjusting percentages. When I do that, the sizing is not done in the image but in the printing.
Once printed, I turn over the sheet and place it on my "light table". In my case, it is homemade. I have a 1/4 inch sheet of plexiglass lying over the space between two plastic rolling carts with drawer. I set a light underneath. When turned on, I can see through the paper to draw. I draw the position of the main deck. I then measure the deck height and draw the upper deck (where applicable) and then do a forecastle and quarterdeck. Larger ships will also have a poop.
Next, I start drawing gun ports from the rear. I draw one and then allow my spacing between ports. I do that until I get near the bow, where I leave extra space and show the forward-most port, reduced in width, as it is angled towards the bow.
I place the upperdeck guns in the spaces between the lowerdeck ports.
I will post some examples, soon.
--Jim Bender
