Designing a shadowbox diorama

[Lawrence@NZFinescale]

To ease my conscience, in borderline cases like this I ask myself how many people will later point to this exact spot on the finished model and criticise it.

Bernhard

Let me introduce you to forum member @Krusty...

[Krusty]

Some compulsory verbiage (forum requirement).

[finescalerr]

You might be surprised that almost three-quarters of the people who ask to become forum members disappear when I warn them about our constructive criticism. -- Russ

[1-32]

Hallo Hauk,
Your drive unit looks to be very accurate, and your steel finish is very convincing,
Cheers

[Hauk]

Things are moving forward. The gantry crane has now gotten the base color. It will of course be weathered, but then Tamiya primer is a quite good starting point.







This crane turned into a major project on it's own, but it was quite fun.

[Barney]

Russ - Disappearing people when told of constructive criticism  - But THEY LOVE GIVING NON CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM !!
Hence the saying  "Never let someone who has nothing tell you how to do anything "
Barney   

Hawk - lovely stuff to the highest standards 

[Hauk]

Impatient as always, I started to weather the truss beam almost before the primer was dry. But this beam will be facing away from the viewer, so nobody but me will se it. And I did test the X-20 thinner I used for making the wash/filter I was going to apply. And then Tamiya primer is totally unimpressed by this thinner.
I made a dilution of 3 drops of Tamiya XF German Grey and 1 drop of XF red brown to 1 ml of thinner.

I think it looks promising,but the dilution might be a bit on the strong side. Next time I will try to dilute it a bit more. I also feel that the tone of the filter could be a little smoother, but with a little dusting of the right tone of pigment powder it might look OK.



Drunk with success I tried to apply a wash to the lathe that was airbrushed with Tamiya XF colors. Short story: fully dried XF does indeed get dissolved by XF-20 thinner. Bummer.

I guess I just have to keep on experimenting.

[Lawrence@NZFinescale]

These things happen.

I've greatly enjoyed Nightshift's channel on YouTube for this sort of thing. Military, but useful. Older stuff focusses a bit more on base technique, but I find it all pretty good.

[Stuart]

It's all looking quite convincing to me.  Beautiful model work. Your castings/3D prints look very clean and well executed.

Stuart

[finescalerr]

I think you're being a little too self-critical, Håvard. The truss beam weathering looks entirely credible to me and, after you dust it with pigments, even you should be satisfied. I also find the primed gantry components extremely impressive. -- Russ

[Hauk]

Thanks, Russ!
It's impossible not to be self-critical when you rub shoulders with the absolute elite modellers on this forum.

And make no mistake, even if I always find things that can be improved upon I am quite pleased with my modeling.

I sincerely believe that participating on this forum has made me a better modeller.

[Hydrostat]

Hauk,

I think you're weathering efforts are quite good. This part of the speech is called 'captatio benevolentiae'. And now to criticism: you're facing a well known problem which drove me crazy for years. Whenever one applies rather thin/wet colors or washes, they tend to dry around uprisings in a not scaleable manner, creating some kind of centrical blobby/dark edges around those spots. It helps to take away all fluid 'laying' on top of the surface and to use a rather dry soft brush to move the remaining color to where it is meant to be, but in the end an airbrush and several thin layers of thinned color may do the job better. Aside of that I'm with Russ that adding some pigments will blend everything together.
I'm quite sure that those details won't be visible later on, but I noticed that all the axles of the trolley seem to have been shortened with a wading-safe side cutter. According to all the other breathtaking detailing milled axle ends with center holes would add a lot to the model.
Last but not least there's a rivet missing. If I find it I'll keep it  .

Honestly: Always a pleasure to see and follow your work. This shadowbox is going to be a cathedral of work.

Volker

[Bernhard]

I don't think your approach is bad. Personally, I wouldn't do any more than that to ensure the crane fits in with the interior of the workshop.

Bernhard

[Bill Gill]

Hauk,
I have heard the "centrical blobby/dark edges" that Volker referred to as being called "tide marks" and one way I often (but not always) have success eliminating them is to observe the wash as it begins to dry. It usually starts drying around the outer edge. When that happens I dampen a very fine brush and very gently run it around the drying edge. That often allows the fringe of color to continue to spread out a bit farther and that usually prevents the tide line from appearing.

However sometimes the line only becomes visible when all of the wash completely dries. If a line appears then, I wet a fine brush and VERY gently scrub along the line. That almost always gets rid of any remaining line without affecting the layers underneath it.

I think the truss beam looks good. Sometimes there are "tide marks" / "centrical blobby/dark edges" in real life too.

p.s. I also noticed the mising rivet, but wondered if it was done deliberately.

[nk]

To me the beam reads as if it was there a long time and collcted dust. The roof leaked and now you have tidelines from the water. I think it looks credible. A solvent dampened No 0 watercolour brush can reduce the severity of some lines if you do some judicious work with the pointy tip of the brush.