Here is the final weathered boat

Well, here are the results with the salt effect, I am sortof sorry because the picture is both blurred and crap and the colours arefalse, it really looks good in truth.

Time to use the hairspray trick, so I covered the boat witha VERY thick layer of hairspray (what an awful smell!!! Worth than Polyesterresin, I feel so happy to have a wife that doesn't use that thing!). then Iprotected some areas and sprayed a coat of blue-grey where the sun doesn'tshine, yellow grey when it does, a trick of the light if you will.

then let's scratch the surface so that there would be paintleft only on some of the upper surfaces -the ones that would be partly abovesea surface at high tide if you will.
It wasn't scratch stupidly, I scratched more at the places where some chainswould have stroken/hit the metal.

And then sorry no pics, but my usual repainting with inks and diluted acrylics.
I made my "Pocket Mig" here as I didn't used any pastel.
On some high highlights of rust, i used a very thin coat of Mig prod's RustEffect. So that it shines a bit (mostly on the upper corder of the cabin).Works fine, like inks in fact.
please notice that the rust colours I did are far darker than the ones Iusually use -that's a whokle "changing process" I try to implement.

So what was my own twist to the hairspray effect? Well i read that the morehairspray you used the stronger the effect was, well I did just that, the coatwas SO thick that the paint had some trouble to stick on the plastic and madesome really weird crevices on the model -those I kept!z

Like I told 2 days ago, my 12th or so "proposition forbetter dioramas" is

« Never use anything out of the box, especially a trickshown by another modeller »

well, now one of the main aims of that dio was to try thetricks of da masters.

For reference I used that:

http://www.migproductionsforums.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=3293 Some all stars sort of manual with explanation on the salt trick and thehairspray trick.

Yep let's do it my way.

First let's undercoat my elements with some rust sort ofpaint (various Vallejos)

My first difference is that I already used the direction ofthe light so that some parts -mainly in front of the thing for the anchor, oneof the size of the cabins etc- with some lighter shade while the underside ofthe cabin and the "rear" of the hull is undercoated with a far darkershade.

Then let's airbrush a thin layer of water and put some bigsized salt grains on the hull. of course those were so heavy that they didn'tstayed in place on the anchor thing but then it could be useful for the base ofthe hull.

So same thing, several other coats of vallejo acrylicsdarker or lighter depending on the place I sprayed.

And then a  third coat with this time some much finer saltmixed with broken big salt grains.

Okay one conclusion from now on:

- If you put too much water for the grains to stick, thesalt tends to melt on the surface which is really very good because it givessome extra texture to the rust which would otherwise lack. (I usually applypastels mixed with paints to do that texture).

When i found out that, I sprayed some thin coat of waterABOVE the salt and let it dry a bit BEFORE spraying some paint coats.

Ah well second conclusion, it really works might fine :)

well and now there's a few pics missing, but basically Ihave been sculpting the underside of the wings and tying them with the body. Ihave been fixing the feet and the white you can see on the birds is the coatsof tamiya mastic and Mr Surfacer for all the elements to blend smoothly!

I have only those pics but when I start painting them I willpost more

So well, the trick  with doing some open wings is to first build a number of Magic Sculp templates on which you will apply Duro on it.

You shape the Duro with your fingers around the template, cut it at the right dimension and size and finally sculpt big wings with a modelling knife.

The templates themselves must be done carefully, with one side with a big angle to show the bend of the wings, while the end of the wings (the place where are the big feathers)  would show more a curve if you all see what I mean.

More birds

Wings! The 6 first seagulls will have their wings at rest.to make those I used some Duro, shaped with fingers and smoothed with amodeling knife

so okay here they are -the birds are really easy to handlewhen you bend the wire this way

Okay it's time to wipe out the base and to insert a smallbit of electric wire for the legs which is mostly okay for the thickness,though I will cover them later with stuff like Mr Surfacer for them to gain abit of extra thickess and also to perfect the joint with the legs..

tomorrow (perhaps) flying wings!

So I had very nice hollidays thank you very much. One day igot to the local newspaper seller to see what they have to sell modelling wise.I fell on some lavishly illustrated mag called "l'Art du Modelisme"and was caught by a great article on some iron and wood effects on someSturmovik..

But there was also one Sturmtiger in the paper, done bysomebody obviously of some authority -can't remember the name.

Well, there was a pic of the said Sturm thing and near it aseagull.

If you compared the thickness of the legs of the seagull toanything on the stg those would have been thicker than the MG barrel!

I was absolutely astonished that a modeller using PE andobviously great reference would allow some grossly [b]*inaccurate*[/b]   birdstanding near his handsome model! The worse being that the eye of the viewerwas more attracted by the white spot of the seagull than to the grey (orsomething) monster.

Actually the problem with using birds -or any small animalsin a diorama is twofold.

1/ the ones available in the shops are crap -for the mainreason that you can't do wings thin enough with resin or legs of the rightthickness.

2/ Anyone putting some birds in his diorama should be awarethat it will steal the show as people will appreciate the *cuteness* of thebird before anything else.

... So what's the solution whenever you want to use birds?

1/ DIY birds

2/ the bird(s) must be the hotspot of the diorama, and forexamples I know, what about Kenneth Yeo Chye Whatt whose dioramas you can find on Kitmaker. or if you will Nico Cabaret  TsushimaII   (btw, you can congratulate the guy, he's on the cover of thismonth's issue of Czech Republic based mag Modelar)

1/ Well, here we are then, first folding some wire

2/ then, add some thickness with MS

3/ Some folds and bumps -the necks are not that obvious todo

4/ Feet done of Duro that are Pre-cut and sculpted

this will be the last post for quite a few weeks, holidaysetc..
but before I go here is the completed fig,
I am always designing heads in 4 steps,
1/ neck and just a small lump for the head
2/ dressing the head with gloabla shape + eyessocket
3/ more details (lips etc) like here
4/ hair and ears and eyes in Duro because the stuff holds its shape better than MS

I designed a tall strong guy on purpose, I am sick with 1.7m guys Dragon like,what about fat or skinny people? what about short dudes?

err well, "completed".. after having sand it and primed it, still a lot more sanding is necessary!

Funny thing I read that the ship design for French boats by the end of theXIXth century included MORE capabilities for personnel onboard than Britishones because British sailors were better trained and .. STRONGER
happy summer to all