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Then I had to do the best part of the groundwork which means the flowing sand.
My last diorama before that one included some work with snow and I add used some microballons and instantly loved the stuff. But I got some dramatic results when I started to mix them with some paint to do some shadows on my snow. However those results were dramatic in the context of building some *snow*.
Here I mixed the stuff with some paints to create some *sand* and it worked fantastically.
First I could use 4 different coloured mixes at one time and make it blend one in another while the stuff wasn’t set. Then the setting time of the stuff –roughly 1 hour- makes it an ideal component to use. Then it produces a slightly grainy texture which is absolutely ideal to represent sand in scale and lastly, as the stuff is semi—liquid, you can pour it anywhere you want and it will gently flow according to gravity –and especially through the different openings of the wreck (pic 24) .
So I just did that basically, I poured in my trusty Sake glasses some microballons (the Signifier brand which is not as shiny as the Andrea one is the real deal here), some acrylic binder and some paint –some yellowy- lighter shade near the bottom of the wreck, some darker and rosier near the front of the boat and especially between the wreck and the hillock according to the general sense of the light (pic 25).
I recalled suddenly the amount of troubles I went through when I started to add stuff on microballons when I was doing some snow. But here I choose to create some shadows using some pigments and it worked really well –so I applied some Van Dyk Brown and black under the back of the boat between other places.
Attempts at creating some highlights using the same technique went awfully wrong though as the pigments goes in all the holes and between each microballon and it really doesn’t look any realistic.
Further attempts at doing some light dry brushing proved to be completely lousy too –let’s face it guys, you just can’t do much with microballons once it is set. But otherwise what a fantastic stuff! I even had enough time to press in the mix some shoe-shaped bit of Magic Sculp I had previously sculpted so that the kid didn’t seem to come out of the blue (pic 26) .
I had the idea since quite a lot of time to create the sea this way: first doing a master, then moulding it, then pouring some polyester resin in the mould and then adding some waves with my usual tinted acrylic gels.
No problem with the first step, I first spent a lot of time on internet typing “wave”, “seashore” and stuff like that in Google’s image search engine until I had a good idea of what I wanted to do. When I did, I sat at my table and proceeded to roughly sculpt some feather cardboard like the sea I wanted to create. Then as the feather cardboard is rather soft, I covered it with plaster. I applied some magic Sculp to create some extra details like the tip of the waves. (pic 27)
My last diorama before that one included some work with snow and I add used some microballons and instantly loved the stuff. But I got some dramatic results when I started to mix them with some paint to do some shadows on my snow. However those results were dramatic in the context of building some *snow*.
Here I mixed the stuff with some paints to create some *sand* and it worked fantastically.
First I could use 4 different coloured mixes at one time and make it blend one in another while the stuff wasn’t set. Then the setting time of the stuff –roughly 1 hour- makes it an ideal component to use. Then it produces a slightly grainy texture which is absolutely ideal to represent sand in scale and lastly, as the stuff is semi—liquid, you can pour it anywhere you want and it will gently flow according to gravity –and especially through the different openings of the wreck (pic 24) .
Attempts at creating some highlights using the same technique went awfully wrong though as the pigments goes in all the holes and between each microballon and it really doesn’t look any realistic.
Further attempts at doing some light dry brushing proved to be completely lousy too –let’s face it guys, you just can’t do much with microballons once it is set. But otherwise what a fantastic stuff! I even had enough time to press in the mix some shoe-shaped bit of Magic Sculp I had previously sculpted so that the kid didn’t seem to come out of the blue (pic 26) .
9/“The sea had to be rough” or how to spend 4 months on a project while I could have get away with it in 2. (How being a stingy diorama builder costs you some time as well as some money part 1)
I had the idea since quite a lot of time to create the sea this way: first doing a master, then moulding it, then pouring some polyester resin in the mould and then adding some waves with my usual tinted acrylic gels.
No problem with the first step, I first spent a lot of time on internet typing “wave”, “seashore” and stuff like that in Google’s image search engine until I had a good idea of what I wanted to do. When I did, I sat at my table and proceeded to roughly sculpt some feather cardboard like the sea I wanted to create. Then as the feather cardboard is rather soft, I covered it with plaster. I applied some magic Sculp to create some extra details like the tip of the waves. (pic 27)
