¹⁄72

Drumming of Daybreak

THE FIGURES

The Royal Navy officers, sailors and marines are in 1/72 scale. The figures were purchased and then converted from infantry to marine by simply cutting off unwanted parts and remodeling them in epoxy paste. Heads, legs, arms and torsos were cut into pieces and repositioned depending upon the activity I wanted to portray. (Sounds gruesome doesn’t it).

After the figures were carved and painted with acrylics, I superglued and pinned them down, usually through the feet, into various positions. Painting the sailors was fairly easy because in the Royal Navy, at the time, there was no standard issue uniform. The differences in rank would be minor and not really noticeable at this scale.

I really enjoy using figures for two reasons. They give the viewer a sense of scale as to how big these ships really were and they also give life to the model both through their action and colour.

I prefer to employ various fine hardwoods rather than paint to simulate the ship’s colour scheme, as I know that wood develops a wonderful patina over time. The figures seem to add just enough colours to keep the overall effect from looking too drab.