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Jaws

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.

Of course all those efforts would amount to nothing if the head looked like nothing. It was done in 4 different steps. The first day I just rolled a thin magic Sculp knob with a strong flat base so that I could manipulate it later without any trouble. Then the following day I made the outlines of the skull including the eyes sockets. The third day was the real one as I carved out yet more eyes socket, and especially I managed to add just the right amount of MS so that the nose and mouth would be great looking. Finally I added ears and hairs out of Magic Sculp and here I was done with the head.

I finally attached the head to the rest of the body with some wire and here I was done, even though I had quite a bit of sanding and trimming left for days to come until I was totally satisfied with the result.

I first tried to paint the kid in acrylics, but I ended painting it like I would do with the hull of my boats, and even though the result was not really convincing, I still presented it to the Lugdunum fair like this. Anyway, one week after clutching my medal, I was back again at it, painting it in oils this time, in a much more precise fashion, and this new version is the one you can see now on the final pictures.

Then some detail that just might appear to be slightly ridiculous, but which is in fact extremely important is the way the boy is fixed on the boat. First I had inserted a small wire in one of his foot and pierced a small hole in the hull where he stands now –no way would I have managed to actually MOVE the diorama without breaking the little guy from his edge if I would just have glue him. Last but not least, when the boy was actually completely painted and fixed at its current position, I sculpted a tiny bit underneath the foot, so that both feet would really look like they are imprinted on the edge instead of just flat feet glued on an edge. When this was done, then I really had my diorama I could be reasonably proud of (image 35.)