"ACW Ironclad painting" Topic

I had an hour or so spare last night so I decided to get a few ACW ironclad ships painted.

You can see the results here.

link

They look fantastic. Question as I haved no idea, didn't they paint them? It was the US Navy.

Good looking ships. Your color schemes right to me.

@14Bore there are many mentions of the ACW ironclads being painted, whites or greys and even blue / grey above the waterline and red or brown below… but I couldn't find many colour pictures of these ship colourings.

The only guides I had were of other gamers / modellers miniatures to go by, and as I don't know much about the period I tried to get my ships to look similar to those miniatures.

@lloydthegamer thanks, they look fairly good at arms length, which will be ok for me.

I say this in good humour: You need to look at pictures of the bow wave and stern wake of a ship. I don't think I've ever seen them looking like the lace trim on a skirt.

I think they look great. Ready for the game. An addition might be drilling the funnel. Then insert a piece of wire with black smoke wrapped around it. A bit delicate, but atmospheric.

@4DJones lol I think the lace skirt trim looks cool… I agree the bases are not great either but very easy to adjust, but for now they have to go into battle with frilly skirts on.

@martin goddard thanks, I did see the funnel smoke in a couple of photos I had looked at and thought that it might be a good thing to try and add, just need to find the time and a steady hand!

I have found refrences in the ORs to monitors painted green, brown, and black. They also, on the Mississippi at least, they used a system of different numbers and colors of stripes around the smoke stacks to recognize ships at a distance.

@Dn Jackson that's kind of cool thanks, might look at doing some different colours when I get some more ships.