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But then of course those were only the undercoats.
The real painting came later, with my "paint over water" technique which ensured that I get the exact tint I want. Indeed it's been years I am through with drybrush n' washes and other Verlinden era tricks. I basically paint my models just like I would paint an oil framed painting. I first apply a bit of water with a brush on the right places and then apply more or less diluted acrylic paint at the right places, Sometimes I dilute acrylic paint with Citadel inks to get a shinier result -the trick being that -like with the plaster sea- you have to think the less possible about the way your are painting. I just basically follow my intinct, and am not afraid of spending hours on a few cm². In the end I also realize I can hide quite a lot of small imperfections that would have shine through if I had used some more imprecise ways of weathering like drybrushing for instance.
Finally I added some sort of trail of salt using some undiluted white paint applied with a wet brush, that I more or less blended with the brown of the hull.
Back to the water (and sweat)
Since my baby was born 2 years ago, my wife unleashed a pityless war on my dioramas, arguing with very good reasons that the polyester resin I use to make my water in scale would also be my watery grave as toxic fumes pour out the diorama practically forever, even once it is set. So I roomed most of my dioramas in the garden shed and switched to Epoxy resin instead which becomes harmless roughly one week after setting. Two big problems with this resin however, it's almost thrice the price as polyester one, and it also dries after more than 12 hours depending on the ambient heat, which certainly limits the amount of work you can do in a day. Its only true advantage when it comes to model making is that it doesn't shrink as much as polyester resin.
I prepared the oil colours needed for the tinting of the resin. I used mainly green based transparent oils as I wanted something that could make some sort of contrast with the red mouth -brown hull. Of course I set up for a very dark mix between black and green paint to be applied at the place underneath the wreck.
So I applied first a completely transparent thin coat of resin so that I could get a great level of transparency near the hull -the great advantage would be of course that the viewer would be able to make out quite a bit of the hull under the sea. Then I applied a lightly tinted green coat, and then after an anormous drying time; both a strongly green tinted coat and also my mostly black tint for the inside of the boat
But now was the moment of truth, and I needed the right timing to be able to succeed. Because however nicely tinted that water was, the boat was still not INSIDE the water. So this is how I did: As my 4 coats of resin were still sticky, the slow drying time of the Epoxy resin allowed the piece of water to be probably sort of ripped. So I put some chemical resistant gloves, quickly unmoulded the sea and ripped it of near the point of the arrow shaped hull-I was lucky as the resin didn't really broke but accepted the strong torsion. I picked my boat and shove it quickly in the opening and closed it straight away, I then put some pinch kind of tool for the resin to glue again on the place of the wound and it basically set up like that.
Once it was done, the next step was to paint a first coat of small waves -so once again I used some slightly tinted acrylic gel and forgot the movements of my had so that I had something looking rather realistic in the end. Then I happened not be really happy about that first coat, but that did'nt matter much as a lot of other coats would be to follow.
That's it guys, if you want to be able to do some nice water, you have to create dark areas and highligts in it, just like you would do if you were about to paint a figure. So I tinted some extra resin with a rather darker shade of green and applied it in the hollow areas of on my waves and ripples. When it began to dry, I pushed the resin above so that there would be less transitions between the tints. I also incresed the dark shadows under the hull
Then I realized that the place where I ripped the resin in order to insert the boat was still visible, so I tried to hide it by placing some small ripples there. Last but not least, if there were some nice bits of colour and shapes, still lacked some real texture on the waves themselves, this is way I used some Microscale Microclear which is a very heavy varnish that leaves a lot of relief on the resin when you apply it by just touching the surface again and again.
The kid
Now sculpting and painting that kid was another story. I perfectly know what are my weak points in modelmaking: that's it: sculpting and especially painting figures. I feel sort of annoyed about that and decided that there would be no "jaws" diorama if I were not able to put out a figure that would not be of professional class, no less. That meant I was ready to do and redo the stuff again and again until I was happy with the result but in the end I didn't have to spend too much time on it. The main point was to create the best bit of harmony and balance I could think of. The boy would be slightly bend on one side just like he uses momentum to be able to still stand on a no doubt uncomfortable ship edge. The feeling the people must get out of the sculpting would be sort of sylthlike, the kid himself would have to be very thin and long limbed just like he just would have to spread invisible wings to get in the air. Then I thought that as long as I would have to situate the diorama in the Pacific, I should better try to sculpt an asian kid, maybe Polynesian (I thought of those wonderful first minutes of Terrence Mallick's "The Thin Red Line") or Philippino. The first steps were exactly the same that you can find on every figure sculpting SBS. Thin and strong wire and a lump of Magic Sculp for the body, then dress the body with yet more Magic Sculp once the first step has dried up. (image 31). At this stage no doubt that the hardest thing to create would be the feet and hand. My way to do that was to first attach a very small lump of Duro to the end of the wires while using the stickyness of the material to be sure the stuff would really be strongly attached, and then adding fingesr the following days. My trick to add fingers is to roll the finest possible lump of Green stuff, cutting some finger sized bits and attaching them on the outside of the palm with an X-Acto blade.
Then when the stuff is sort of dry, I fill the inside of the palms with magic Sculp or Tamiya masic diluted with Acetone.
The feet I made independantly of Duro, and then fixed them with glue the following day while hiding the joints with yet more Magic Sculp. Of course I had to dryfit the figure thoroughly at this point as the boy would be bending forward too much if I didn't lean his feet accurately.
