Updated; New improved versionThanks for the kind feedback everyone, there's been some really interesting remarks about the background on the vessel, which is great, I love nothing more than inspiring thoughts of what, where, why? it really makes for great discussion, champagne!I don't get to paint spaceships often, so this was a blast to do.I really wanted to do a crashed/wrecked/marooned craft, but not so wrecked that you couldn't tell what it was. I was trawling through images of the shipworks on the beaches of India and Bangladesh, and saw this piece by Andrew Bell, the lighting is brilliant. www.anmm.gov.au/site/page.cfm?… . This inspired the setting and lighting.I'm a big fan of practical craft designs, craft which look as though they have a real purpose, where any elegance or superfluous design is fashioned around it's practical necessities. In the early stages of the painting I wanted to add two beachcomber looking characters playing chess in the foreground, relaxed as though they had grown accustomed to waiting a long time for rescue, - that'll be it's own picture.As the ship took on its form, it started to look like a rusting beached whale, - hence I designed the wing to look fin-like and accentuate the barrel shape of the hull, with bloodlike rusty smears, as though harpooned and left to decay.