Building the Revell wind class icebreaker part 3 - making the base

There is a nice photo on Wikipedia showing Burton islanddriven up the edge of the ice, moored to a pole driven into the ice, with a funny NO PARKING sign and some inquisitve penguins. That was what I aimed at. So I made a base in two layers with a cutout for the hull in my usual technique. 

The texture for the ice was created by sprinkling fine sand onto a layer of white glue. 

White wall paint did the rest, stippled onto the water surface andbrushed onto the "ice" 

Having masked the ice are, the water was brought to colour and glosscoated in my usual manner. 

Ice floes proved most credibly to be done from plaster, as it breaks in a similar manner, 

One of several failed attempts at arranging the ice floes. 

This is what I ended up with. The ice floes were glued to the base using heavy gloss acrylic medium. 

Now I needed penguins. After a visit to a nearby zoo, I made some critters using a 1 mm styrene rod as a starting point. Beak, wings and feet were added from thin styrene sheet. Dental casting wax gave some body.  

The first batch of penguins. 

They were primed with white Stynylrez from the airbrush. Feet were painted dark grey, beaks orange and the rest black. They are no real penguin species, but rather aim at a generic penguiny look. 

I made the traffic sign and printed it as small as possible.