Ramming speed!

The Legatus hasn't painted anything for well over a month now. This is for a number of reasons, not least of which being that I have been out of the country for more than three weeks.  However, there is something else: a loss of confidence in my painting ability.  Hopefully this will return.  In the meantime a suitably nautical lifeline has been thrown by Big Red Bat.  He is looking for Roman galleys for a game he is running and remembered I had mentioned that I had the Grand Manner one (unpainted of course).  So I have now offered to paint (and possibly crew - I've always wanted to paint some Roman marines) it.  This will give me the opportunity to paint something which isn't  a figure and, hopefully help me recapture my painting skills.

I've always liked Roman galleys and one of my main interests in these were caused by the fine illustrations by Italian artist Ruggero Giovannini (1922-1983) for the Ben Hur comic strip which appeared in Look and Learn magazine in 1969.  Running for a suitably epic twenty weeks it contained several fine representations of galleys.

So I plan to ascend to the loft tomorrow and locate my galley which, I am sure, will be just as complicated to build as I fear!  Its the oars, its the oars!  And the rigging. And the sail.