Shipbucket

Easy answer is - be prepared to spend money on your hobby. Keep an eye on Amazon, E-bay and other sites that also sell second hand books. I can't afford new books.

Most of the real life drawings I have done have been from drawings sourced from the internet. If you are not sure of the authenticity of a drawing you wish to make an SB drawing from, ask one of the people who are our SB gurus on that country. Hood for GB and Commonwealth, BB1987 for Japanese, GarlicDesign for German, Coloseum for US, Gollevainen for Russian/Eastern Bloc. If the ship you want to draw is obscure put up a copy in General Discussion or Sources and Reference drawings with a request for help. You may be surprised how many people will help.

one doesen't have to spend much to good sb work, since internet does offer quite well most of what we need for free, if one knows what to look and where. Research is fundamental part of the drawing process, and most important (though not the sole) aspect of it is to get the scale rigth from the start. It naturally requires ability to seek the most trusted source and little ability to see past whats written somewhere.
Naturally it also takes a bit of mathemathical skills as well, and I suggest all to use programs like paint-net, where the scaling can be done with 1 pixel accuracy.

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Shipbucket mainsite, aka "The Archive"
New AU project "Aravala"

If you'll take some advice from someone who takes all his drawings from others -especially Gollevainen Hood and Krakatoa on here - the most useful source drawings are those which show what is inside the ship. It sounds obvious that the funnels are over the boilers, but knowing the internal layout helps confidence no end. Also for what is below the waterline, most photos don't help at all.
You asked " Is Friedman always right?" The answer is usually, but not always. For example, his book on British Cruisers tells you the WWI HMS Birmingham had four screws. She had two.
(I 'pay my way' to the real artists with information, usually on British ships, sometimes others.)
I know books look expensive, even second hand, but if you keep looking (use http://www.bookfinder.com/) you can pick up bargains, and your collection soon grows, because they don't wear out if you treat them well.
eg for Farragut
http://www.bookfinder.com/search/?ac=sl ... 520history

Pictures, lots and lots of pictures. You get as accurate a linedrawing as you can from the internet and then you check it against pictures of the ship.

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“Close” only counts with horseshoes, hand grenades, and tactical nuclear weapons.
That which does not kill me has made a grave tactical error

Worklist

Source Materiel is always welcome.

He probably went in a trap, when he wrote that text. due to that Birmingham have 4 turbines connected to 2 shafts. He probably read 4 turbines and concluded that it had 4 shafts

For American ships Friedman is generally considered to be beyond reproach. His work is the finest available.

I have hard copies of all his work and will be glad to share information for anyone's projects - just PM me with anything you need.

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USN components, camouflage colors, & reference links (World War II only)

Might 2017 bring a conclusion to the North Carolina-class drawings, then?

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MS State Guard - 08 March 2014 - 28 January 2023

The Official IJN Ships & Planes List

#FJB

heuhen wrote "He [NF] probably went in a trap, when he wrote that text. due to that Birmingham have 4 turbines connected to 2 shafts. He probably read 4 turbines and concluded that it had 4 shafts"
He may have done, but it is a common error. Most of the usual references (Conway's, for example) say four. Also NF had Adelaide right, with two screws. I would trust him on US ships, but British design process was rather different from US and he makes a few (very few!) slips with older British warships.
I'd be interested to know your correct source. David Lyon in Warship 1, 2?

I'm not sure how "I can share information with people" was interpreted as "I am going to complete a class of drawings"...



Anyway, I hope Tristan Alting hasn't been put off of drawing real life ships because of this thread. If anything his mistake is easy to correct and as he already understands how the style works (and most of the difficult small parts have already been drawn), completing the Farragut correctly shouldn't be very difficult.

On another note, a source I consider to be extremely accurate are the "TFW" series plans prepared by Thomas Walkowiak at the Floating Drydock website. Well worth the investment. If you're going to be spending all this time researching and drawing, spending $40-50 on plans (to me at least) is not a big deal.

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USN components, camouflage colors, & reference links (World War II only)

I'm working on correcting the length of the ship. It's gonna take a while since school is starting soon

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