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Of course, as I modelled a shore that is supposed to be battered by sea and wind, I mostly put the ground cover in the most sheltered area of the diorama which means behind the boulder. The ferns that appear on the boulder as smaller too. Same thing for the disposition of each fern –the most huge are in the most sheltered areas etc.. (pic 20)
Then as such a matter would have been lacking in details, I would have need some extra stuff that would balance this flow: first the zone near the sea would be flatter and covered with some footsteps done by the kid, and maybe a few shells or small rocks that would have been brought by the sea. Then as I needed a hillock for my own tastes and also for the balance of the diorama, maybe something more rockish, just like compact sand or maybe an eroded boulder as both would have work.
I first bought some feather cardboard and proceeded to cut it at the right dimensions, then I cut bits of it to roughly make the surface. I dry-fitted the different boat elements according to the plans before cutting in the cardboard the right emplacements (pic 21).
Then I started doing the solid stuff. I mixed not so thoroughly some black paint in some Plaster of Paris and let it dry. After one day I broke it with a hammer so that I could get lots of little bits. Then I mixed some plaster with a rosy kind of paint and applied it very roughly with my fingers on the hillock. The point with tinting the plaster is that I couldn’t afford some white spots anywhere on the hillock if my paint work on it would have missed a small area.
When the plaster started to set I switched from fingers to modelling knife and kept on modelling its shape. I can now unveil one of my strongest theories about creating natural shapes.
When your fingers stop obeying to your mind anymore or simply when you forget about what you are doing, when you don’t THINK about the shapes you are creating then you really begin to create some interesting and natural shapes. Don’t think too much, you will get the stuff wrong, it will look calculated and Nature doesn’t.
I then make a mix between some heavy acrylic gel a darker shade of rosy acrylic paint and some sand. I then applied a part of this heavy paste around the shore and pressed the plaster stones in it. The other part I reserved to tie the vegetation with the ground.
I then proceeded to apply different rosy –yellowy shades here and there on the hillock to add some variations –not too much as most of the final aspect would be given by using some paint pigments (pic 22) .
Those pigments I use are regular Windsor and Newton pigments I bought more than 10 years ago, nothing exotic or “modeller-proof”. I have most basic tints and a couple more specialized ones when it comes to the brown shades –and I mix them together as I work so that I really never use the same colour.
So the base I used there was black, I added some Van Dyk Brown, red and yellow, and also some beige/rose tint I found once in an art shop.
I first applied some dark mixes to do the dark Shadows –as the hillock as got some big crevasses, I really needed the bottom of these to be very dark, and then I covered the upper parts with some clearer mixes (pic 23) .
8/ Groundwork -the sand.
Now I really wanted that all the elements present on the ground –boat bits, ground cover would appear to just emerge from the sand. The sand had to look like real beach sand: a flowing matter that leaks on the ground, that penetrates and engulfs every element (especially the windows of the back part of the boat) until the sea stops it.Then as such a matter would have been lacking in details, I would have need some extra stuff that would balance this flow: first the zone near the sea would be flatter and covered with some footsteps done by the kid, and maybe a few shells or small rocks that would have been brought by the sea. Then as I needed a hillock for my own tastes and also for the balance of the diorama, maybe something more rockish, just like compact sand or maybe an eroded boulder as both would have work.
I first bought some feather cardboard and proceeded to cut it at the right dimensions, then I cut bits of it to roughly make the surface. I dry-fitted the different boat elements according to the plans before cutting in the cardboard the right emplacements (pic 21).
When the plaster started to set I switched from fingers to modelling knife and kept on modelling its shape. I can now unveil one of my strongest theories about creating natural shapes.
When your fingers stop obeying to your mind anymore or simply when you forget about what you are doing, when you don’t THINK about the shapes you are creating then you really begin to create some interesting and natural shapes. Don’t think too much, you will get the stuff wrong, it will look calculated and Nature doesn’t.
I then make a mix between some heavy acrylic gel a darker shade of rosy acrylic paint and some sand. I then applied a part of this heavy paste around the shore and pressed the plaster stones in it. The other part I reserved to tie the vegetation with the ground.
I then proceeded to apply different rosy –yellowy shades here and there on the hillock to add some variations –not too much as most of the final aspect would be given by using some paint pigments (pic 22) .
So the base I used there was black, I added some Van Dyk Brown, red and yellow, and also some beige/rose tint I found once in an art shop.
I first applied some dark mixes to do the dark Shadows –as the hillock as got some big crevasses, I really needed the bottom of these to be very dark, and then I covered the upper parts with some clearer mixes (pic 23) .
