I’ve been having fun lately looking at concept art books by the likes of Chris Foss, whose garishly striped ships have enhanced the covers of science fiction novels for nearly 40 years.

There’s a certain challenge in trying to recreate somebody else’s design (including historical vehicles and vessels), but I feel most creative when I build something completely my own. After poring over Hardware: The Definitive SF Works of Chris Foss a couple of times, I set it aside for a few weeks before trying to build anything inspired by the artist’s unique aesthetic. The little cargo ship below is what emerged on New Year’s Day.

Next, I set myself a challenge to build something less vertically oriented — bricks stacked on bricks. Even though the build was much more complicated, I prefer my finished spaceships safely swooshable, and just don’t feel like the gunship below would be safe to hand to the nine-year-old who lives in my head.

Nevertheless, the gunship was a fun build, and I may reuse the front part for something different (more in line with my existing microscale fleet).