Rolfosteus Finale

Go back to part 2 - http://kevtk.blogspot.com/2019/11/rolfosteus-part-2.html

I had quite the busy afternoon in the studio. I'll keep everything separate to make it easier for me to go back and look up things.
Anyway, the Rolfosteus vignette is finished. Picking up where I left off, the entire vignette except the fish got a primer coat of black, and a series of gray dry brushes on the tree, and then varying green highlights to plants.  Different pieces of bark, and pebbles busied up the river bed. The fish was added in and then everything was given a dust coat of turquoise to give the impression of being under water. Thanks for looking.

Rolfosteus Part 2

 See part 1 - http://kevtk.blogspot.com/2019/10/rolfosteus-model.html

 In this session it was time to create the base for the model. I wanted it a little different than my other prehistoric fish, which were imagine in the sea. I couldn't find any info where they thought it lived but I gave it a river type base. starting out with an mdf base from Green Stuff World I added a mound of the Aves Free Form Foam epoxy for the groundwork. The stuff is very light weight and easy, albeit a little sticky to use. The only downside IMHO is that when it's mixed it smells like a wet dog to me until it dries.

Going to the fish section of a local Pet store I picked up an interesting little piece of wood, and some plants.  I cut the plant bases off and stuck them into epoxy and pushed the still soft epoxy around the plastic roots. The fish will be moving thru the tangle between the branch and plant.

Painting comes next. Thanks for looking.

Tho I create my dios to be seen from one POV, I felt the need to take a pic of the rear of the diorama.

Rolfosteus model

This project all started after seeing an interesting image of the fish on Deviantart.
From the site: 

Rolfosteus is a genus of arthrodire placoderm fish that lived in Australia during the Devonian.‭ ‬Though small for an arthrodire placoderm,‭ ‬the stand out feature of Rolfosteus is the enlarged snout.‭ ‬The specific purpose of this snout is still unknown,‭ ‬but fish that develop such a feature usually do so as a form of sensor suite,‭ ‬having a heightened ability to detect things such as smells to even electrical impulses from prey that otherwise might be hidden.

One thing I like was that this fish topped out at approx. 6 inches.  So I was able to make it life size.

The sculpt was done with Super Sculpey, with MoreZmore ceramic beads for eyes.  This guy will be painted ASAP. 

Paleocraft Elasmotherium

The newest entry to my prehistoric zoo, is the Elasmotherium from Paleocraft.  
From wiki:

Also known as the Giant Rhinoceros of Siberia, is an extinct genus of rhinoceros endemic to Eurasia during the Late Pliocene through the Pleistocene, documented from 2.6 Ma to as late as 29,000 years ago in the Late Pleistocene.^[2][3] Three species are recognised. The best known, E. sibiricum, was the size of a mammoth and is thought to have borne a large, thick horn on its forehead. Theories about the function of this horn include defence, attracting mates, driving away competitors, sweeping snow from the grass in winter and digging for water and plant roots.^{[citation needed]} Like all rhinoceroses, elasmotheres were herbivorous. Unlike any others, its high-crowned molars were ever-growing. Its legs were longer than those of other rhinos and were adapted for galloping, giving it a horse-like gait.

 The model was a typical Paleocraft offering - excellently detailed, in a bubble free, odorless resin. There was a little flash here and there in the thick fur, but took little time to clean it up. 

An Xacto knife shows the size comparison

 Oddly enough, the kit went so smoothly that I took no WIP pics. I just used various brown colors, washed the recesses with Citadel's Agrax Earthshade, and finally giving the highlights a topcoat of a tan flesh color.
Thanks for looking.

2017 IPMS: Day Trip #2a

I you read the Ash Fall Beds post, I mentioned that in the Hubbell Rhino Barn where were quite a few posters of the fauna that were found before, during, and after the catastrophe.  Liking them so much I imaged a vast majority of them (apologies for the glare, there was no way to avoid it) -

2017 IPMS: Day Trip #2

Today was the day for our long road trip to the Ash Fall Fossil Beds, outside of Royal, NE.  The three hour drive through small towns, corn and soybean fields had us drive down this rural road toward a compound of about 4 or 5 buildings.

Hubbell Rhino Barn

After paying the admission fee and NE State Park Parking fee  you walked into a very nice visitors center. There was naturally a gift shop, a worker, who I guess was a grad student, behind glass and working on fossils, and then some specimens. 
I guess to straighten things out right away that the fossils in this bone bed aren't dinosaurs, the first station informed the visitor that during the Cretaceous time, Nebraska and most of the Plains were under an inland sea - 

Paleocast's Lepidoderma mazonense

This is probably my last aquatic "dinosaur" kit for a while. It's the Lepidoderma mazonense, commonly known as a Sea Scorpion. 
I don't remember how I found it on Etsy, but it's from an artist called Paleocast. The kit comes with just the animal. 

The base is a re-purposed aquarium decoration I got from Pet Smart. Pet Smart has a lot of terrific looking resin decorations - rocks, corals, trees, branches, etc... The very bottom is a simple pine base topped with sand my my nearby beach.

The model is one piece - the animal. Despite being well packed, one of it's legs was snapped off. It snapped cleanly and was super glued back on with no problems.

The only thing that looked odd to me was that the legs seemed to be connected to nothing as well as that appendage hanging out the back. I didn't research the anatomy figuring that it really wouldn't be seen, so I just connected everything with some Aves Apoxie Sculpt. 

The next thing was to paint the animal brown, and then with a piece of sponge, dabbed an orange brown of the model. Then washed it in Citadel's Agrax Earthshade. He's standing on his head while he dries, as I look at what pine base will fit the animal and little resin decoration (in the background).

Finally I carefully drilled a hole in the thin body and one on the coral. A clear acrylic rod put him in place.  I added my beach sand and then toss on a few tiny shells from the beach to finish off the front. For the back (which was pretty empty) a created a trilobite with some Aves. 
To finish it off I mist coated the whole thing in a thinned down Turquoise and gloss clear coat to make believe it's all underwater.  
Thanks for looking. 

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. 

The Caveman T-Rex Part 2)

It's been a while, so to see part 1 - click here - http://kevtk.blogspot.com/2017/03/caveman-dinosaur.html

Picking up where I left off I primed the model black and started painting. In the movie the dinosaur was, depending on which image you looked at, simply all gray or a gray green color. I thought the gray would be a little plain so I used 2 Vallejo colors. Oddly enough they are both named Green Gray (?!). But the loc. numbers are different - 101 & 106. Number 101 is also know as RLM 2 for all you military plane modelers. 101 is darker than 106. So the painting began.

 While the T-Rex is drying I turned my attention to the base. This time around I just wanted something really simple. But first I looked up the movie poster and saw the typical 3 color blend to the logo letters. I gave my best shot trying to mimic the look, first by spraying the yellow and then the orange - 

By adding the red and then the black background. I was finished with the logo - 

From there I set upon the rest of the base - 

Then I set the T-Rex on the base and I was done - 

I used wire to loosely pin him to the base. But it just didn't sit right. It looks like one guy sculpted the dinosaur and someone else sculpted the base and didn't communicate. I couldn't find a spot where he stood squarely on the base. In one of the pic you can see a toe on the left foot off the ground. That would definitely get "points off" at a model show...  I may go back and cut that toe off and modify it so it touches on the ground.
I also just saw a You Tube VIDEO where this polymer artist sculpted some plants. I have some green FIMO somewhere and just may give that a try to fill in the base a bit. 

Thanks for looking.




 

Caveman Dinosaur

Feeling a lot better now, I got back to my little attic lair or is it studio. :-P
I was looking for something easy to whet my appetite for building again, so I pulled out the T-Rex from the 1981 slap stick comedy Caveman. It starred Ringo Starr and a number of other recognizable names as Barbara Bach, John Matuszak, and Dennis Quaid. 
At one point the groups runs into a large T-Rex and more comedy ensues - 

The model is very well done and looks just like the model in the movie.It comes in 6 white resin parts plus a base.

It only took me an hour to get all the parts pinned. The only problem I had was there was a gigantic bubble where the tail joins the body -

But once pinned it was nothing to pack the gap with Aves. I then spent a little bit of time matching up the skin texture to the repair. I think I did an ok job. I then spent another hour adding the little scutes and skin folds to the rest of the join spots. 

Next up is priming and painting. What I'll have to think abut is that some images have the T-Rex gray, while others have it a gray green color.  If anyone actually reads these posts, what do you think? Gray or green gray? 
Thanks for looking.

Pterosaur On Nest

This model has been on my table seemingly forever. I picked up this kit during one of Shane Foulkes' "collection selling" sales. I have no info on it. I'm assuming that part of it was already started. The reeds in the background seem to have been glued in place. I'm guessing the 2 eggs may also have been previously installed.  So all that was left for me was to paint up the animal and base.
As with all resin kits, things start off with a soapy wash and a prime with Stynylrez black primer - 

 For whatever reason I always seem to start with the base first and while the reeds reminded me of a marshy area, the rest of the ground seemed to say otherwise, so things were painted up to be high and dry. There are a few moulded in Ginko leaves, but I raided the wife's spice rack, and added a little more texture to the ground work. I also too some basil and stuffed it in and around the eggs -

Now on to the animal. Whether it is a baby as has been suggested or the female looking out for the eggs, both seem to me would not be brightly colored to bring attention to itself. So I painting in mute colors, matching closely with the groundwork. Thanks for looking.