Dunkleosteus Finale

(See Part ONE & Part TWO) 
Having thought I was finished with the fish, I moved on to the base. I left off putting sand on the sea floor. From there I decided to add a few more clay coral and sponges, a starfish or two, a few sand dollars and an orthocone shell (red arrows).  Whether they were all alive at the time of the Dunkleosteus, I don't know. I decided to just use some artistic license to make the scene a little more busy. 

 Next I painted up the corals in different colors to brighten the scene. On some of the corals I used a pearlizer additive to the paint.

 The scene was still a little bland, so I decided to make some clay seaweed. As in a previous post Sculpey III was a little too brittle. I bought some Premo and it worked great. It had a bit of flexibility to the sculpt without making it rubbery. But once again my newbie kicked in and I realized I made each elongated leaf way too thick.  So off to the pet shop I went to buy some plants. 

I see a lot of people use aquarium plants right out of the package but to me they look too plastic and scream fake. So I primed and painted them. I even took a few extra leaves off the stem to use as dead leaves that found their way to the sea floor. 

From eBay I also bought one of those Devonian  fishes that are sold in the candy machines. I also primed and painted that to hide the plastic -

I was happy now. What I decided to do to tie the whole scene together was to give the whole vignette a mist coat of turquoise to make the scene a little darker and to mimic the subdued colors you see in under water photography -

Thanks for looking.

Dunkleosteus Build part 2

To see part 1, go HERE .
It was time to paint. I had an idea to use green and a sort of tan color for the  body - 

 As soon as I finished the tan I knew this wasn't going to work. Time to think of somethings else. Looking at the back of the fish and especially the belly part, there is no scales scutes or anything else. So I thought of the way some guys paint skin. They do it by painting little squiggles all over the figure with different color paint. Having never done this before I tried it with black, blue and red paint it turned out looking very busy - 

You see on the second side,  some of the lines are way too thick.  I was having troubles with my airbrush, and rather than stop and fix it I tried to muscle on and complete that side.  I'll just have to make the over coat a little heavier in sections where the thicker squiggles are. 

Taking a break of a day to clean the airbrush which became completely clogged by the time I stopped. I took bits apart but trying to keep major sections together. Didn't work. I got the brush all cleaned out and I was surprised at how much gunk was in there despite me regularly "cleaning" it after each session. So  being cleaned I had trouble putting it back together, thank goodness for a large number of videos on You Tube showing me how to put it back together. 
I also went and bought a cleaning kit and Iwata cleaner. 

 Back to the placoderm. Seeing many fish, they are dark on top and light on the bottom. So I was going to replicate that. Looking at my paints I found two colors that ironically were both named Gray Green. One was lighter than the other and their respective loc. numbers were 101 and 106. On top I used the darker color and dotted along the back of the animal. The lighter color was sprayed on the rest of the body keeping it light enough to see the squiggles underneath - 

  In the pics you can also see that I added a thinned red wash to the gill area and the inside of the mouth. I also added a brown wash to darken the deepest recesses. Since most fish also seems to have a silvery sheen to them. I mimicked this by giving a light spray with Vallejo silver. Except for a gloss coat, I'm calling the Dunk done.
The base is next. Thanks for looking. 

Paleocraft's Dunkleosteus Build

Still taking a break from my "machines', the next critter on my bench is Paleocraft's Dunkleosteus. From their site: 

Approx.1/20 scale, (15.5 inches in length). 6 piece cast, body, lower jaw and pectoral fins separate. Included is a resin coral reef styled base as well as an oval pine base for display. The model comes unpainted easy to assemble with a minimum amount of preparatory cleanup before being ready to paint.

Dunkleosteus is an extinct placoderm fish that lived until the Late Devonian period about 380-360 million years ago.  The largest grew to approximately 33ft and was the top predator in the seas at that time. 

The kit: This is another one my my stash of kits that was purchased long ago and put in the pile. As the description says it comes in 6 pieces and includes a wooden base.