My current drawing project I am working on a profile drawing of the English Third Rate, Speaker. I am working at a larger scale, to improve the drawing. In general, when you draw large and then reduce, almost anything looks better. I am trying out 20 feet to the inch, as a scale. The main question is if the largest ships will fit onto an 11 x 17 sheet. I suspect the largest ships will require a slightly larger size. I am following my usual pattern by doing a pencil drawing, and then inking. I have started the inking process. For the masts, I scaled off of a Van de Velde drawing of an English ship from 1671. Masts, yards, and bowsprit all benefit from measuring from a prototype. I had started by trying to use the 90-gun Second Rate, shown in Frank Fox's book, Great Ships, as a model, but I didn't have any real confidence in the result. I backed off, and started looking for representative Dutch and English Van de Velde drawings. I found one of each, and am proceeding from there.