1992 Children

        Recently recovered photo of two of my kids and two neighbor's kids from about 30 years ago:

Monet's Dinghy

This scratchbuilt boat was inspired by this painting by Claude Monet. A copy hangs in our house.
 

Much of the raw material was locally-sourced stuff that I already had: bamboo skewers, wood stain, hors d'oeuvre toothpicks, drapery cloth, wire. The rest came from the scrap-box. The only things I had to buy were two sheets of balsa wood and Krazyglue for less than $4. I scaled the model such that the hull was the length of a balsa sheet, or 2.33 times bigger than the hull in my A4-size printout. Then it was simply a matter of multiplying the sizes of the boat's pieces in the painting by 2.33 to have the model retain the same proportions. Colors are craftstore acrylics and wood stain. 

Progress shots start with free-download paper-model boat patterns I used to get a good likeness of the hull.

The nearest thing to plans I used on this project:

Oseberg

Billings' Boats Oseberg done. Nice to work on a relatively large-scale ship (1/25) with a simple sailplan and minimal rigging. Local woodstain and sail fabric.

FB-111, 1980s

Monogram's 1/72 EF-111 kit, molds from 2001. Modified a bit to be an FB-111, because I prefer the FB's color scheme.  As usual, minimal decals, handpainted acrylics,  and dry pastels.

                                        

Batch

Some recent planes, all done with dry pastels over handpainted craftstore acrylics. Their soft-edged modulated finishes make for a soothing ensemble: 

Turkeyfish

 Another turkey bone confection finished. Inspired by lionfish, although that may not be discernable.

A-6 Intruder, 1965

 AMT/ Hasegawa's 1/72 kit, molds from 1968. Southeast Asia camouflage in lieu of typical grey/white US Navy scheme, based on a photo and illustrations I found online. I ad-libbed the camo pattern. Underside finish is local flat white spraypaint. Camouflage is pastel chalk over brush-painted craftstore acrylics. Original kit decals were too old to use, so I went with less-old ones from the scrapbox. They aren't a historical match with the paint scheme, but I like to go with what I have on hand. The inelegant refueling boom was deliberately omitted.