G'day JBA,

Excellent water foam. I tried this tonight on my diorama and can say that it is a difficult thing to get looking 'right'.

Chas

JBA,

your watereffects are amazing!!

cant say more, just love to check this topic every time i get on my computer!

Koen

That is looking terrific mon ami
The contrasts in colours and textures add plenty to the simple scene. Can't wait to see the figure on board



hehe
Cheers Jean-Bernard; I may actually realise this to others sooner rather than later with a scene in mind...

I didnot know that Laurent Fignon was doing diorama



Joke between the french

Jean-Bernard

This is really interesting and I'm having some good fun watching this one unfold. I've really enjoyed your body of work and seeing one of your masterpieces-in-the-making develop in front of me is very cool indeed. I think 'Archangel' is one of my favourites but all of your dioramas are wonderful.

I have to admit I'm scrambling my brains thinking about one thing though and I'm getting more confused the more I think about it. In one of your earlier posts, you said the name of the boat rhymes with 'how lame can I go'.... I will admit that his hint escapes me completely. I'm sure some others have it figured out but I'm lost, completely lost on that point and it's driving me nuts. Please explain....?

Great work, looking forward to something new every day.

cheers

Bob

I post this early because I just won't have any timpe on my hands at all tomorrow,

well well, thank you guys!

Keith thank you! I am pretty happy you like my stuff, always nice to have the input from somebody who is well known in the diorama world as well as a lot of experiences and plenty of dios under the arm
Art well.. like says Jean-Luc Formery of Aeroscale fame, "there might be some artistic element in this, but art?"

Chas, on which part of your dio do you need foam? at first sight it really didn't need any.. The trick i can give you is to really not putting much paint in your mix, that's really important. And then to forget about what you do really. if you try to paint it carefully you will just mkse something unrealistic. just put out some loud music, think about something else, and basically paint the foam!

Thank you Koen!! Till only 3 days to go!

Thank you Brad, your input was really helpful and helped me choosing between 2 things
1/ he's a kid so let's keep simple
2/ he should have shoulders!
Well well good luck with your diorama anyway mon ami

Seb, but laurent Fignon wears a ponytail while me I got too much wind see, I have a long beard and not much anymore above

Hey Bob thanks for your comments! As you can see, the old Archangel is still on, I put it on second reserve because no direction of the light, and then it needs a major update (extra icebergs, trimming the sides etc etc)
"Elco how lame can I go" is actually the subtitle for this diorama. I HAD to find a boat with Jaws painted on it, and here, no choice, only Americans are cool enough to do that, then what boat?
Pibber? nah..
Pequod? hey cool, but only a few teeth at the front and only white from what i've been told.
Fairmile? look like a fisherman's boat, no charisma -even worse, the forward hull is straight.
Elco? well, Elco look pretty good, but you know JFK, PT 109, Italeri, Revell... even worse I had to do a mid series ship to be sure she could have been sent in the pacific which meant a 109 like.
So no matter how lame it was, that had to be an Elco

Well, well, here's the time for the second coat of resin! pretty dark one coat


And then when it is almost dried, using a modelling knife, i blend it with the upper sides so that there could be some gradient transparency of sorts..


The picture is blurred but it's not easy to take a picture while force-blending some almost set resin

Really nice work. Up to your typical standards. I'm so used to your work being of such high quality I have to stop and remind myself just how good it is.

One question/comment - with the water being rough would the figure tend to look a bit downward? I know I tend to look down a bit more when the balancing is a bit more 'critical'. In mountain biking I have to really work on focusing on the 'out line' of a 'trick' (down and ahead).

hey Scott, that's a very good observation!! At first i wanted him to look just in front of himself. that's the old "thousand yard stare" i love giving my figs. But then He will have the whole body leaning onwards -wait tomorrow you'll see what i mean, the good thing is that it gives an extra sense of rush

I had to rush the paint of the kid in order to present it at a very depressing local show this week-end -acrylics instead of oils oh well, too bad as I didn't succeed the face as well as I should have.

Still, when i showed the fig, some guys said, "hey, nice Hawaiian"
I think I failed the Philippino colour

I will work extra on it towards the end of next week when i will show the glamour pics of the dio..



Still 2 posts to go -tomorrow, the completed scene as taken fastly friday night
in 1 week time, the glamour pics!!

There I go again.... jumping the gun. I should have known there is always a method to your 'madness'
Now that I see his feet actually 'on' something I think I can envision how he's going to be.

Nice painting on the figure. That much open flesh can be tough. Nice job. Have to agree, more Hawaiian, than Philipino but hey, not bad.

How do you like LifeColor paints? Is that the acrylics you used for the boy?

Excellent paint job. For me, this kid is undoubtedly Filipino. My second guess would be Malaysian.

I have no idea why someone would just assume the figure is Hawaiian.

(Whatever you do, DON'T search "Philippino" in Google, the top result is not nice!)

Chas

Hey thanks Scott as usual Well the body is okay, but my lack of definition of the toenails plus a few small defects on the hands didn't led the whole to be that tops -and then I screwed his eyes.
But that's for now, I will work extra on it by the end of the week.
Just too bad i have been entering in a championship this way! the base i did was truly terrible too!

Thanks Chas
ah Well, he is Hawaïan i would say because his skintone is more "brown" like a big suntan than "asian", that's quite hard to put in words, but when I post true pics with good light you may see what i mean.
But then

You really made me laugh with this! I have actually a BIG problem with language, I didn't read a French book in 3 years and I write as much in French as I do in English,and both language mix in my head. That's Philippin in French
I fear i will end up like one girl I used to know, who couldn't speak properly either language, French or English!

come on jba, Hawaii and the Philippines are shouting distance from eachother. If you nailed one, you nailed the other one too.

Well, glamour shots by the end of the week, and then you will tell
Those countries are a bit far from my home actually!

So here are 2 pics I have been taking friday night at 10PM..
vanity, vanity.
As I wanted to enter those at the Lugdunum 2009 show which is a very big international etc fig related show, I had to rush quite a bit some details you see..
First the eyes area is wrong,
Then there were some mistakes on the fingers (like badly placed wrinkles), too few definition on toenails etc that I made out only the following day by daylight,
Then I rushed the town to find clear quopte for the sea and coul'nt find any
then there's at least one coat of sea missing..
..and a few waves
Finally the base I did (with an X-Acto) has got to be one of my worst ever,

Fantastic work
The waves on the water are very nice

This may be the worst diorama you have ever made...

...but the waves are still the best I have seen. The figure is of a great standard and the boat is very interesting to look at, nice colours.

I wish my worst dioramas resulted it this !
Seriously, simple theme, well executed, each component is a small masterpiece....the sea, the hull and the boy.

You may be over critical as you've been looking at each piece for a while, and no doubt you will adjust the areas that don't suit your expectations / the eyes and toes / the base frame.

I just would like to say how much I appreciate this whole "blog" from start to finish. It illustrates not only outstanding technique, but how much detail and effort goes into each of the three main components of this small diorama. It also gave us a slight insight into the creative mind of a truly, 'one of a kind' artist in diorama

Cheers,
Charles

Great job!
You had said early on in this post that this was just a training piece for a later project...I was curious on which element you were"training" on. From the looks of it, it seems to me you nailed it!

Wow That looks superb!

That is art work!, the effect is superb! Well done!!!!!!!!

I like the ship, Intereasting with the figure walking on top of it .

Keep up the amazing work!

Superb stuff! I could never do anything like that!


Martyn

...what Charles said.

I could look at those waves for hours on end. Everything is there: color variations, ripples, foam, even the way the light reflects off of it. Clearly the best water representation I have ever even heard of. It reminds me of a quote I keep in my head by Truffaut - "I have always preferred the reflection of the life to life itself."

simple but effective and visually stunning, another master piece

cheers

Keith

WHAT SKILL AND ART

Nige

What can we say ? My eyes popped out once more...thank you JBA

Simple but so effective, mission accomplished ! G.

very original jba!
love your inspiration!

WOW
That's a great little build.
Love the colour & the wave's.
The boy almost make's you hold your breath so He dont fall off.