The Ship Model Forum

OUTSTANDING!

Love the splintered deckplanks....
Hail the wreck modeller!

JIM B

this is just plain awesome. I can almost visualize the finished version in my mind. I have been hit and miss on the forum for the last few months, but I will be check back here to see how this progresses. Thank you for sharing your craft with us.

aha thanks Jim and Tim, well thanks heaven the ship is a wreck, it would have been really hell to do those stanchions straight

Now I would take the opportunity if somebody is around today to ask for an advise -I just had a look at Jim's Mass�na build pics buyt couldn't make my mind and here is a picture of the Protet.
The cabin house is obviously painted some light colour -or is it? would the wood have been left in a wooden colour or could have it been painted in some grey or tan colour?



Anyway, finally I unmoulded the form and it seems to have work! of course the water looks very rough -and not because of the wind- but after severe cleaning, trimming and sanding, it should be ready to be top layered and foam covered



In the meantime i had unfinished business with that mast of mine. So i had bought for another project those fine Tigermodels chains and those are great
So first I had to do some small bits of solder through holes dig in some bigger section solder (hell! hell! hell!), and fix the lot using superglue and epoxy glue.
Then I managed to solder bits of chain to the mast and then using gravity, I managed to superglue them to the stanchions.
well it's done now!






and now it looks like that:

Well, I really can't find the proper words to describe your work. The scratchbuild and detail are simply amazing. Both the photo-etch and specially the balsa work were a delighted sight to my eyes and brain. Outstanding job. By the way, I've been next to one of those 2 pdr guns recently...we have at least one plus other kind of small weapons of the time here in the Navy Museum at Lisbon.
Keep going with the good work. Shame on my Graf Spee!!!!
Regards,

Filipe

Thanks Filipe! hey I would have known there was one of those 2 pounders in Lisbon, I would have beg you to take a good hundred pics! I had the plans but i must have guessed the rest from a stamp sized pic taken from a Russian forum!
Come on, your Graf Von Spee looks very handsome already

Well, i started painting some stuff today but i will stay with the water today - it's time to pull out the heavy metal

that's it I needed my power tools to create the minor holes for mast and other stuff, the water is quite see through you see..
which is bad because i made something of a mess while pouring the resin once or twice, look below you will see what I mean

see all the indesirable stuff ? some foam will be needed to cover up the mess!

here is my paints mix.. which I have to cover up with more resin

In the end I get this &:)

it looks okay but that's still the second step out of err.. 4 or 5

More coats on the water! i wait for the time the resin is almost set and i apply coats with a modelling knife!

This coat was completely transparent, and really almost set (my hand still ache after having trying to detach the almost set resin chunks!)

here is the end result after extra coats yesterday evening. i still have some foam to add on the top of it.

The base coat for the blockhaus.. more on that later

Will you add a figure? Or perhaps a seagull, as a maritime raven, staring broodingly over the wreck?

Hi Michel -no, no seagull, if I were about to put *one* the eye of the viewer would be invariably attracted by this odd detail and would forget the rest. I don't like second level plots in my diorama -this is kind of stuff that makes most armour dioramas so poor.
BUT seagulls are great things, and indeed I will use them in a nextish projects, but then there will be more than one, and they will also be completely integrated in the project, not like a hair falling on the soup
If the seagull was to stare to the wreck like you say, there would also be some symbolic meaning to it of course which is one of the things I am after, but then, well not this time:)
Of course there will be a fig, but I doubt I would have the time to prepare it before I finally go in holidays so I prefer achieving the base first!

I spend my modelling time of yesterday to try and guess how i would organize the colour scheme of the diorama, and it was not very easy honestly. I think I found a way, but in the meantime I sprayed some white colour on the blockhaus to lighten a bit the daubs I applied yesterday.

good, it seems a few of my colour problem are solved. I think i will really see if the whole clicks after I start painting the wood though..
i took again the same painting technique I used with the Sokol. not out of enthusiasm, but because i really had some troubles to get my paint and ideas completely right.
Anyway, first water


then black paint blended


then a whiter border


then some white again but mostly undiluted applied on the places that should be highlighted -the places that some drybrush though I never drybrush anything.


and *sigh* yet another coat of resin


a way to make it dry, at leats it won't be falling out.
the only pruprose of that layer was to correct the colours. i will post some pics tomorrow of the hopefully finished piece of water!
you can also see the mast that I completely forgot to photograph while I was painting it!


btw, the colours shown here are completely false! the blockhaus is grey-yellow! not that awful bluey colour. i just didn't corrected the colours

All� Jean-Bernard

Looks good (as usual), but I still didn't get the story behind it: how important can a figurine be??

Keep up (you're almost on vacations)
Rui

Hi Rui, now that's very true, I am almost on vacation, just a 35m square room to paint and wooden floor to varnish before I can go, the diorama should soon be a rather dormant thing till September
But now well how important a figure can be?
hey i love boats, so if i wanted to do still lives I would do like anyone else: go and buy Trumpeteer's HMS Derek or USS Obama in 1/700 and here we go, nah..
I model people in fact, they're the catalyst of my scenes, if you were about to take away the fig from any of my diorama, then it wouldn't click anymore. They will always be the point were the eye of the viewer will go first.
here the fig will surely be underlining the sense of abandon of the diorama. As for the story, I don't think there will be any, just a few odd things and -I hope- something that makes an impression at first sight.

Rui, you used to be a sailor right? Then, I suppose you will confirm that agitated see looks more like the right side of the pic than of the left ?

So to get this effect i use acrylic gels like the 1/700 guys do

it's very hot outside at the moment, so after a good dozen of minutes the gel begins to set on the surface, then I work on it a bit more, trying to pull out some of the gel, and it's also good to wipe out some brush strokes if any are left.

well, the gel is all very good, but it looks plastic in the end, so I have to coat a good layer of tinted Humbrol clear Quote on the top, and it also does a bit of shadows on that extra texture!


Then back to the painting of the wood: it looks a bit psychedelic like that, but in the end, it *should* work!


today i should be able to end up the paint of those elements..

Hey JBA!

Have you given up work...?

Your progress is BREATH TAKING!!!

JIM B

This is so beautyful! I just love your Work, JBA.

All� Jean-Bernard!

The water on the right side picture looks good, but the one on the left side is very convincing, too!
I tend to agree with you on the dull/matt finish on some of the acrylic gels used for water!
I prefer "my water" shiny, as you know - and unless you are portraying a foggy day (and even like that, some shine will occur), sea should be gloss! (this could be a good idea for a project: all colors with a change hue to create a "foggy" atmosphere! Hummm...)

Are you going to include broken glass windows on the cabin?

Painting a room... well... welcome to the club! I am also listed to do that

Keep up

Rui

I disagree about the plastic look of the water. It looks very fluid to me. A very eye catching effect.

I love the rotten wood look on the broken boards. I'm sure your not done yet, but the white metal framing looks too new to me in comparison to the wood. Maybe more rust?

Fantastic work

John

thanks for the answers and comments!

Jim -my work is pretty much a season one. I mostly work for public offices, and in France absolutely no decision is taken between 1st july and 1st september, so i merely have to deal with the stuff I left over. on the top of this i didn't have any wife and kid for 1 month as we've got to push the walls of our flat because the little one is really moving a lot
so yes, that left me 5 to 6 hours a day to work on dioramas which is not so good as my thinking can't work at the same pace as my hands and i end up spending time correcting mistakes

Tim thanks, hey the white stuff was only an undercoat, it's not painted yet. I tried to find a bit of inspiration on those great Staten island wrecks pictures you can find on internet when it comes to wood and all

Now Rui as you know, I really like your dioramas a lot and no less because you are not afraid of using colours but this:

unless you are portraying a foggy day (and even like that, some shine will occur), sea should be gloss!

is really very interesting. i mean, not everybody has the luck to live at a few yards away from southern seas (or in Portshampton ..) to spot the glossiness of the sea but well..
As a diorama maker, I have been noticing that a great way to improve the realism of the work was to work as much on the glossiness of the stuff as you would on shadows/highlights. and now Tim says that the gel is okay.
Let's be clear: the gel gives a rather plastic look to the sea so my method is to add some clear Quote (which is VERY glossy) on the sea, and to put again some slightly white tinted gel on the crest of the waves because foam is never that glossy. the gel is LESS glossy than any varnish you can find.
So now the question is: if you figure northern waters, or if you LOOK at them, would they appear less glossy than southern/ sunlit waters? would I improve the realism of a northern sea diorama by NOT figuring a very glossy sea?
anyone got an opinion? I know I will try either way..
Otherwise Rui, yes, there will be some glass on the windows

Alexander and Jon, much thanks for the support

And now, for the diorama



yep that's right, i send the day of yesterday applying paint remover to wipe out all the gel layer.
And now i don't understand why it did those whitey blots during the night while there was none the day before while it was ultra dry.
4 reasons I see:
The water is so glossy that I have some trouble working on big portions of the dio at a time because of reverberation and I might not have notice that and it would only reveal itself on morning light. (okay, sounds unlikely)
The gel reacted with the Clear Quote (unlikely)
It was so hot 2 days ago that the gel dried up too fast
the coat of gel was too thick (hell it's not the first time i apply gel this way!)
anyway, I now have to put some gel AGAIN!

About the RAGE issue:
combination of the last two points: too hot + too thick
Remember that the gel will dry faster and created those whitish bubbles /areas

I'll get back with the sea color discussion, later today

Don't despair, Jean-Bernard! It's only a problem
Rui

very nice work, I wish I had the patience you have to do such detailed work !!

Thanks for the support Prowannab, yes i'm very patient except when it does NOT come from dioramas, like for instance queues in Post Office
hey Rui my problem is solved, and I guess you are right about the causes. I know that you get disasters if you dry the gel with a hair-dryer! small bubbles etc!

bizarrely enough, when I removed the gel it also removed some chunks of resin below. i was very afraid at first, but after one good clear Cote coat, well it gave some sort of fractured effect which I think looked pretty good!


Then, well, more gel, but *cooled down on the amount this time*


Then this picture is to show something specific. how to create shadow highlights with water: here it is with that area between the sea and the Blockhaus which had to be shaded.
Actually, i should have used tamiya's transparent paints but i didn't have anby of the right colour. those paints are good but really very dangerous to use when it comes to water making.


Anyway, that's it the pace of my updates will slow down, and it will completely stop for 3 weeks starting Wednesday, don't cry for me Argentina i am going in holidays

So I thought it would be fair to give those 2 simulations of the completed work -though i hope to have completely finished the diorama work before I go! Would stay the figure and the base to work on.