November 02 2007 | The place where I do the dirty stuff

Sorry for the title -here's the garden shed where I have been relocated when it comes to do everything dirty modeling wise -that means the polyester resin and the airbrush.
This place is located at the end of our tiny garden, it's falling apart basically but is still quite convenient. Too bad about working with water outside in this season :)

November 02 2007 | The natural stuff I used

Those are strawberries roots. i discovered they were ace for trees like willows etc. Otherwise there are mosses that I picked on my outer walls and let dry for a few months.
Some of the roots will be pretty cool to create seaweed -the kind you find in marches.

November 02 2007 | The undercoat of the groundcover

using plasticine and a bathroom tile is the best way I found to coat the groundcover with a first coat of paint using an airbrush.

November 07 2007 | Underwater groundwork

I am sorry for the long time without posting anything, but it had much to do with the water effects which proved to be messy, inefficient, involving a fantastic waste of resin -and whose outcome is drying outside as i write this -so nothing is sure concerning the result.

Anyway here we go with the groundwork: I didn't have any plaster left so I had to use some artificial stone to create the underwater relief.

November 07 2007 | Underwater groundwork painted

here's the dirty mix i have been using to paint the underwater groundwork -Van Dyk brown + leather paint. With a bit of black for the dark shadows and pure leather for the parts near the top of the water

November 07 2007 | The mould for the resin

See this friggin' pot? that's industrial stuff to help unmould the resin. I bought it 30 bloody euros.
So the mould is in glass: it's flat, that's the great advantage of glass :)
I use some very strong paper to glue packet to tie all the borders together.

November 07 2007 | The paint and the first coat of resin

here are the mixes I have been using for the paint: the more the resin will be close to the boat, the more groundwork will be visible, but then I want that the water looks almost blue the more you get far from the gun craddle. So here are my mixes of oil paint -transparent colours of course, though I began with a huge dose of paint to create an opaque bottom of the wate on the places where no groundwork is visible.
This picture must show maybe the second coat of resin. Qquite a lot of stuff is already in the water!

November 09 2007 | Just another coat of resin

Here is what the diorama looks like after 4 or 5 coats of resin. Note that most of these are now transparent -except some of the borders that i tainted with a semi -transparent blue mix to figure out extra depth (or so!)