Tutorial - Experiment for creating waves

posted by roman, jarhead, kong

Howdy visitor of the deep jungle!

This upcoming aged article is brought to you by my hands which are busy as a bee these days. Broadcasting this little older article who was at schedule to be written someday. It is a about creating waves, combined with the 2k water version i am working with here in this complementing topic related article  and testing around with some try and errors.

First we got to light a candle - this photo has nothing to do with the article at the moment, later on - placed here it just means a warm welcome to you, dear reader:

A little while ago I did a little Pirate scene, maybe you remember.
I will now tell you about its progress and what i have done and thought - just out of this box called my brain. Hope you enjoy. (You might find fast attacking brain storms and additional commentaries in brackets!)

As the pirate base grew I choose to add some 2k water to the scene (c'mon, he is at a boat, i didn't really had another option).  I was like yeah good idea but somehow I wanted to get something more, like a visualisation of speed to the scene to make the pirate look even more mad. First tests have been with some acrylic gel to have a look on how they work and dry - the result did not convince me and after days of drying it still looked pretty strange to me:

 I choose to test around with burning some plastic to create various random forms for waves - i did a little collection (about 5 hours work) of those so i can use them for other projects too without the problem of being lazy in creating them everytime i would need them. Creating them is kind of easy, use some thin clear plastic form whatever and carefully burn it over a candle, when you see it changes in material leave the candle, pick up a pair of tweezers and pull that melted plastic to the form you like, wait for a moment to let it harden again and cut off the piece you won't. (BEWARE: You can make your plans in your head but it just goes its way and you got to live with it.) Photos:

A little drop in on how i did prepare the base first - the ship part was pinned above the wood to get the effect of the ship really drifting on the high sea. Cleaning the wood from dirt was next. The ground was painted in some greenish blues to underline that effect (but i already anticipated that there won't be much to see later on.)

I choose to place the plastic pieces before I'll put the 2k water in. First i did tape the height of the planned water with TESA strip. Now I placed the plastic pieces, choosing those I like the most to create my way of waves. They have been glued with super glue.

Next i mixed my 2K water. 
It is easy to do mistakes here and in the end it might happen that it won't dry out quiet good. To make sure it'll work prepare yourself and concentrate. You really got to hit the spot of a 50/50 mix of the yellow and white part. If there is a tiny amount more hardener (yellow) then the white part it doesn't matter most of the time, it feels like it is getting harder just faster, BUT beware this is just my oppinion. Try to concentrate and get the exactly 50/50 and you'll be safe. Take your time to mix it together with a stick (about 4~5 Minutes of mixing) to really bring it together. If you want to add a little colour splash to your water do this before mixing it all together ...

I mixed in some clear blue by Tamyia and some Hawk Tourquoise by Citadel. Avoid to mix in too much colour as this might influance the chemical reaction and the 2k water won't dry anymore. Don't use a brush for dipping it into the 2k Water, it will be a dead brush fast. I have used some kind of wood sticks, toothpicks are also fine. While mixing do it slow and easy or you might get too many bubbles in your water.

 

 

 

 

 

I also had several runs on this as you can see in the photos above.
I often fail in concentrating, but i had a lot of fun with experiments. I choose to make the water look more realistic and threw in some dirt and stuff and mixed it in.

I now did fill up the water to the base. I filled it up til i've reached the height mark of the tape. Do it carefully and after you are finished wait for around 30 minutes. It might lose some height while the drying process starts or maybe run ou somewhere if you did not tape carefully enough. If it looses height put in some more, so make sure to mix enough (not way too much, but much). If you are doing it right the 2kwater will start to dry massivly in the next 3~4 hours and will be dried out after about 32 hours. While putting it in i tried to avoid hitting the prepared plastic waves directly with the 2k water. Make sure to prepare your workspace to be under way for eventual bad moments of doing a big fail. I wish you a good go and only happy accidents.

After it was dry i did put up some volume to the waves with clear acrylic medium called "Impasto Gel I" by Lascaux, which was bought at Boesner, a big german art tool selling store - link! In my early testings i found out that it will dry out completly clear if it isn't put on massivly. So I did this on several runs to build up the volume of splash! SPLOSH! I also had a test with some gloss varnish mixed with clear blue by Tamyia, but that did work that well, but gave the waves a little colour switch after all. I just put some more volume up after the experiment. I also did bring in some fine plastic strings i've created due burning to make some tiny splashs, just "glued" them with the acrylic medium - it similiar to this article about waterfall creations.

After all was dry again (did this over several days after it was always putting on top and waiting time - you choose how far you will go) it was sanding time ahead. Put off the tape from the hopefully hardly dried water effect (check first, if you did not during the days gone by). Careful use of the sanding machine with rough sandpaper was the first step. Afterwards many different sanding papers have been used - going from rough to fine.

After the sanding everything final was prepared, like cleaning the socket, repainting it black, as far as i can remember i again did bring up some volume to the waves with the use of the acrylic gel. I did this for so many times i just can't remember. Now it was time for trying to create some water foam on top of the waves. I used some cotton from the bathroom for this case after i remembered it from an article i once read myself. I wasn't happy with the Q-Tips so i went for some anti make-up pads. I pulled out fine strings, some loose and some were moved in form by the use of my fingers. They were placed with the use of matte varnish (no idea why, but i can remember doing this with gloss varnish and they looked somehow yellowish in the end and were way to glossy - i just did it my way).

In the end again final preparation took place, like bringing in a tiny fish jumping from the waves, adding more volume here and there and finally polish the 2kwater sides of the filled up area. I was pretty happy on how all the effort turned out but also realized that there might be much easier ways to realise such a plan.

You can see the final model in different views here.
I hope you liked this little trip through my head while doing what i have done and hopefully i could inspire you to experiment yourself to your visions. Let me know via comment what you think or tell me your questions if you got some. If you think of saying thank you to some busy bees fingers hit the donation button.

Aloa eh!
Happy Painting to you all!
Roman