Thanks Frederick, deeply appreciated, the are on me

A bit of terrain modelling. Water.
A base done of plasticard, I pour some plaster in it and reserve an angled shape in which i will pour resin.
the material I used are strawberry roots, Model Scene grass, acrylic gels..

Then i sort of "dress" the hole

.. and pour some resin in it. That one was pretty much tinted in place, very dark. There is some green and blue and red, though my picture is rather bad.

Terrain -earth,
Here are the first steps of road painting. Some more detail painting will come afterwards. I also made a raised terrain part out of plaster.

Fixing the grass tufts on some masking tape -a good way to airbrush them

Shame on my blurry pictures, some broom hair, grass tufts.. more plants are to come, as in real nature, the ground cover is *layered* and dense. The first lightning effects of the diorama are done. Shame on my blurry picture

I always learn a lot from your threads. Great stuff!
J

Wow. Thanks so much. inspiring, to say the least!

happy and flattered to know this Jerry

happy it inspires you Anthony!

Just those 2 pictures today.

I added some new plants though I still have to individualize them a bit better from their surrounding environment, and then I added that short pole. the end of it i will rework as the sort of knob look unrealistic

So the first picture is done with the crap camera that i know how to use

And then the second one with the good camera that i don't know how to use

I don't know if that's a tough one for you guys, but what do you think the small white and red poles are here for?

I am making a wild guess and will say maybe a ghost is involved? Hence the filmy attire? The poles mark a crime scene or grave?
J

Going be awesome

Well, somewhere your lady with the suitcase has to fit in, there are wrecked parts to put somewhere, ......
the normal answer would be to say these are markings to find the road under high snow, but normal is defintely not the way for you work, so i have no idea.

Have a nice weekend

Claude

Is it supposed to be an area that has been burned by something at the crash? I must say the scene is looking fantastic. I would have to agree with Jerry and guess that the poles are for marking the location of something like in a crime scene?

Might be a little late, but I just read your postings. The facial sculpting is good, but the body is out of proportions. I think the arms are too long and/or the lower legs from feet to knee are too short.

Thanks for searching guys!

Jerry, those certainly mark something..

Thank you Anthony!

" normal is defintely not the way for you work", thanks much for this Claude Enjoy the week-end you too! May I remind you that there is SMC in Eindhoven and that's not so far from your home!

Karl, well like Jerry you are somewhat close -actually, I took the idea of displaying those as well as most of the groundwork -from a picture I have in a book about Abkhazia. They put those poles where they know there are anti-personnel mines -and then apparently those stay like that quite a long time. I thought it was a great and cheap idea to add some coloured spots.

Aha *gulp* Beagles2, you are certainly right on that, really I shortened the right arm already, but I can't put any picture of it as she is a mess of half sanded primer and all, thanks a lot for your comment! When i turn her in next week, please make another comment



Last pictures for a few days, Those last 2 evenings I painted the care wreck (nobody figured out what kit I used?)

A mix of plaster and acrylic paint for all the undercarriage. A few pigments for the wheels.. All the shadows turn to purple. which is quite hard to figure over the green car parts but well..


The only non -blurred picture I took of the complete wreck. I will have to correct the lightning when I will put those on their definite place. I should also add some more obvious paint scratches on the green parts.

I think I know the kit you're using, but I can't quite think of the name hahaha. It's relatively new, right?

Looks...creepy. In a good way of course. Just in time for Halloween

-Conor

thanks Conor, hey I hope it will look kinda creepy in the end
You are right in assuming the kit is fairly new. less than 18 months I suppose, while the special version of the kit I bought is about 4 months old now..


Well This week-end I mostly worked on the general setting, adding some oil stains, small debris like bits of metal on the road. I tried to take some pictures but those were mostly failures, only that one sort of approaches the way it really looks. I post it so that you may feel what kind of light effects I am after.
I am not too sure about my next posts as now it will be mostly painting clothes items and the fig. of course I will have to find something suitable for a base

Well,whatever the theme is it's coming along nicely.
J

thank you Jerry! Well the diorama is over now..

So well why didn't I post any other pictures before the completed ones?
Well, first if I had show the suitcase, I think it would have given up the complete diorama, but the true reason is this:
A diorama is a *whole* when it comes to colours. I think it's sort of unwishable to paint each and every element separately if you prefer. As the colours of one element sort of influences the other element. So i spent a lot of time on the finish, applying several paint touches here and there turning around the scene again and again.. so that I have this weird colour scheme, end of the afternoon when the sun gets its pinkish shades and the last rays get the faces of the people almost orange.
I feel free with the colours ever since I saw a *green* light once in Galway, Ireland.

Ok, back from my expo and this is the first thing i check.

Uff, well, hmmm.... i have been in Galway also some 25 years ago, did not see or remember any green light, but really remember the ever changing light effects (between all the clouds, it was october) and i have difficulties seing that in your light effects.
I think your effect is slightly "to much". The girl especially looks only somewhat bleached, but i do not recognize any special light here.

Let me say that this piece has really a lot of artistic freedom.

Can you tell me more about the suitcase? It is actually nearly identical to a piece i wanted to do in my dio.
(i want to show an abandonded car with an open suitcase lying around and the cloths spread around)

Salut

Claude

I think the light works eerily well on the figure- her appearance changes in all the viewable angles, constantly drawing the eye in toward her and away again. I think this gives the viewer a fantastic experience in that you are immediately drawn to the woman and then you begin to notice the devastation around her. The way the light plays over the scene also drew my eye down and around the wreckage.

The composition of the scene kept me guessing the whole way, I wasn't sure what would go where or how it would combine but it is fantastic to see it all come together. Nicolas, I must both salute and congratulate you on this masterwork- you are a true artist.

Hey Nicolas, nice, colors. I am sitting here looking at this peice and can feel the warmth of the sun as the clouds pass by. This color effect is fantastic. Bright sunlight areas surrounded by the dark shadows of the clouds spread over the ground. This one truely shows your abilities to capture a natural element that I miss in my work. Beautiful splay of colors. Here's an addition you might like; an over night (personel) bag opened up with her hairbrush/comb on the ground. Just a thought. I always find myself trying to add just one more peice of whatever to mine, that last cherry on the whip cream. But no matter, this is another master peice.

Everything is beautifully done here with a very haunting effect. The color use is superb.
As with your last dio,this one leaves me with a disturbed feeling.
But...this is what you intend..no?
J

Well Claude this is really a "diorama with effect" more akin to a diorama that features an explosion, a jump or something if you see what I mean,I took this risk so there will always be some persons that won't click to it. You are certainly not the only one that thought either that the effect is too much or simply neither here not there, but what matters the most to me is that it really *does look the way i wanted it to look* and that's an encouraging sight because as you know I am extremely ambitious with the way I plan those dioramas simply because I dislike doing twice the same thing and enjoy the challenge!
So well this is a regular end of the day light effect purple shadow and orange red light, so hard in places that it somewhat burns the picture (yes, she is almost painted white on the face)
No, that's not Galway's green light! More akin to the ones i saw in Burgundy or quite simply when I walk my elder kid in a huge park near home on sundays evenings

Ah well the suitcase is scratchbuilt -plasticard and green stuff for the buckles and other details. It probably took 2 hours to do it. tedious!


Thanks Karl for the compliments, indeed a diorama is a 360° thing so better it to look different on all angles, especially if some light effect is involved.
Yes yes you are right! I often have that discussion with fellow modelmakers about the sub plots of a diorama, I usually don't like those much, but if you manage to get the center point and a main plot that is powerful enough (here a big light effect) then the scene works the way you say.

Which leads me to Bob -hey friend thanks for the compliments, and theh the question is "where to stop the sub plots". Indeed I had sculpted a toothbrush.. and then I stopped on that path and didn't included it, perhaps because the people would have notice it too much and it could have distract from the main theme. The same thing about the shirt -i wanted it to paint it with stripes! But then I thought that people would have stare at the shirt looking at the quality of the painted stripes and overlook the rest.
*no detail comes free when you are doing diorama making, and sometimes, less details means a better diorama*
Thanks for the suggestion and the compliments

Jerry yes that's the old "like me or hate me but don't ignore me" thing. i used to be a music journo and I was so proud to see my papers in the national press, well nomore, so I guess I somewhat miss it and have to put a sort of lightbub on my head
Ah well, I will keep on looking at your diorama, I do like it :=)

Don't get me wrong Nic,I do like your dio.
J

Aha Yep Jerry, I did got it, it's just that I probably lost my answer in translation and late night writing, sorry for this
Thanks !

I found back that, it's a poor in progress shot of the suitcase building, the hard part is to keep the fingers around the plastic the time the glue sets.

Merci Nicolas for the suitcase picture, of course it's a scratchbuild, very well done, i love it and it saves me some work as i will simply copy it :-)

For the light effect i should have added that indeed all works for me, except the girl.
I should also have added that it may work after explanations, but as i remember that is also something you do not like as the dio should be self explaining.

But hey, we can't be on the same wave length every time, it would be to boring

Claude

yes indeed Claude! You are perfectly right on everything!
See you soon on another thread or on yours

Amazing work Nicolas. It's not what I expected when I first found this thread but that's a good thing right?