Tutorial - creating a little underwater world

posted by roman, jarhead, kong

Aloa and blub! blub!

This little article shows a little insight on how I did the base of the Son of Ahab that I have finished as a Christmas gift lately. It fits well to the articles on how to create real water waves and how to create clam fouling on a boat.

The project was pretty short timed. So the base was a quick one too. I had a socket standing around where a saw was used to get sawdust for MAESTRO. The cuts were pretty randomly but I choose to use the socket anyway. Thanks to Sockelmacher.de at this point again for his cool socket. As already said the Son of Ahab was to travel in a walnut. So I did build up the base from pieces of the socket that I broke off - that is where the height comes from. Rip something off - place it elsewhere.

I wanted to create a little underwater feeling to the simple base so I have picked up some tiny shells I did get from Thomas on last years Painting Class in Soest. I also found some tiny and real corals that I also recieved in the past.

Next I have glued everything in place, primed it and painted the basic of the base.
I kept it simple as I knew I don't have much time and the coloured water will do the most of the effect later on.

The next step was adding more detail.
Therefore I have used thin iron sheet and a scissor and cutted small stripes on it. I did rework the stripes and cut thm sharp at one edge. Bend the way that I like them (take care they might be sharp and you can hurt yourself!) and prepared on cork it was priming time - for some small fishes from Busch's Small Animal Set too. After priming everything got painted and glued in place with superglue.

 

After everything was placed I have used some 2k Water to fill it up. I did put a little drop of Tamyia Clear blue into the 2k water during mixing it up. After the 2k water from Ziterdes that I use is a little bit yellow it turned out a little greenish - mixing yellow and blue makes green. After I did not have much time for doing the 2k water I had to rush a bit and put in a lot. I had to stabilize the sides with some plastic card pieces.

In the end I was pretty happy with the effect for a hurried project. Just some fun that adds a little detail to the project and maybe some inspiration to you. The spume on the water was done like explained in this article. Sadly I was a bit too much in a hurry and the water is not perfect but anyhow the one who got the Son of Ahab as a gift was damn happy.

I hope you liked this little article!

Keep on happy painting!

Roman