thistle burr

Call me Thistle. Some years ago- never mind how long precisely- having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. This is my personal art blog. Shipyard stuff, travel paintings, sketches, personal art, works in progress, and the occasional finished piece. If you need to contact me and don't have a tumblr please email: my tumblr username at protonmail dot com

[thistleburr]

Worked on this today with help from a crewmate, but not the cool part with the griffin things, just the maroon border. I did a great job color-matching the original maroon paint that was on there, but I didn't take a before and after photo so you'll just have to take my word for it.

[thistleburr]

It's way too hot today!!!

[thistleburr]

I don't think my projects for this year are completely done yet, but this one might be! Look at those gold leaf letters! Thankfully I had some help with these!

[thistleburr]

The ship looked gorgeous today. But the weather is windy and cold!

[thistleburr]

Finished up the small letters! Next, the big letters!

I can't believe how well this is going. I was afraid it might actually be impossible to apply gold leaf outdoors like this until I actually tried it.

[thistleburr]

Leo is back on the boat again! I'm so happy with him, and I'm especially happy about the new gold eye color!

[thistleburr]

We were trying to apply gold leaf onto these letters on the stern of the ship today, but it's just too windy so we gave up on it for now!

[thistleburr]

Leo is done!

I'm really pleased with how he came out and I'm especially glad that the gold leaf eyes worked out well. I changed some things about him this year but I don't think most people will ever get close enough to notice.

Hopefully I can get some better photos of him in some better lighting before he goes back up onto the boat!

[thistleburr]

All of her masts are back!

[madnessfromthemountains]

I’ve never seen a crow’s nest on a bowsprit before. Is that unusual?

[thistleburr]

Hello and thanks for asking!

Those aren't actually crow's nests - they're called "fighting tops" because they would've held swivel guns or people wielding rifles. A crow's nest is more enclosed and is located higher up, because they're designed to be a lookout point. It is very unusual for a ship to have a structure like that on the bowsprit though!

We have one because we have an unusual sail called a sprit topsl, or a bowsprit topsail. The small mast you can see at the end of the bowsprit has an even smaller yard for the sprit topsl, which is a very small square sail. Here are examples of what it looks like, on a model ship and an illustration of our ship:

The lower sail is the spritsl or the bowsprit sail, and the higher sail, right above the small fighting top on the bowsprit, is the sprit topsl! It's not a particularly practical sail - it's small so it doesn't provide much extra propulsion, and makes it hard to see where you're going - so you will only see them on ships from a particular time period.

[thistleburr]

More bad lighting, but look at that! Leo's mane is now covered in gold leaf. I'm not done yet though - There are still errors to fix and details to improve on.

[thistleburr]

Rapidly approaching the finish line with Leo's mane! Just a little more to go on this project before I just have fussy details left.

[thistleburr]

All of her masts are back!

[thistleburr]

17th century cargo ship, passing a modern cargo ship.

[thistleburr]

Nice weather for going aloft today! But I was working inside...

[thistleburr]

Today's Leo progress! And a reveal - his eyes are now gold! I've been wanting to change the blue for a while and gold seemed like the obvious choice. I finally put a layer of gold leaf on them today, along with a lot of details and edges. There's still a long way to go, but I'm pleased with how things are coming along so far.

[thistleburr]

Just another day at the shipyard

[thistleburr]

A lot of progress today! That's a good 1/3 of his mane done if not more, and both of his tails are done except for the detail stuff. Once I do a first pass on everything, I'll go in later and worry about the edges and patching any spots I missed.