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:
