The Edmontosaurus kit and base are completed as my non-entry into our forum’s Creature Feature contest. Since the last update chronicled the painting of the dino, this final update/galley will focus on the groundwork.

I took an unfinished round wooden jewelery box from Micheals and finished it with an Ebony Minwax stain. I wanted uneven terrain as most dino kits I see are on relatively flat and larger than the dino displays and  I figured I could do something cool with a small base that takes up less shelf space. I took the Dremmel tool to the box to make a sloped terrain then filled the box with plaster. While still wet I sunk and propped the dino (which had long screws sticking out of the soles of its feet) into the plaster leaving about 1/8″ of space between the plaster and the sole of the foot. When the plaster was cured and the dino in place I covered the plaster with a dry/thin Celluclay/grit mixture. The base has a very nice weight which makes the whole piece VERY stable and not likely to tip over without a lot of force.

While the Celluclay was wet I worked in a few small rocks and some tiny pebbles sifted from concrete sand that look like scale river rock. I added a large piece of root I saved a few years ago as a  warped and chewed-up tree. When the celluclay was dry I painted it with a water-thinned Raw Umber “Americana” cheapie acrylic from Michaels. Great moist dirt color. The thinness of the paint worked well in that it tinted the rocks only lightly, but darkened the celluclay to the color I wanted with ease. Once that dried I applied some thin washes of Medium Hauser Green for the small mossy stuff in the dirt. For the water I merely brushed on a raw-umber tinted glossy acrylic medium then wet-sponged it off the tips of the rocks so that the glossy wet looking stuff stayed in the cracks.

The foliage is where I’m really excited about this piece. I had made some paper leaves a few years back for a tree and decided to expand on that for this. Click here to view that as it has the basic technique and paper/paint products I used for the leaves. (and butterflies) This time, instead of a punch I had cut out all of my own leaf shapes. I lightly folded strips of the painted paper in half and cut the leaf shape in order to get them symmetrical. Then I used various dental tools to emboss them on a thickly folded piece of paper towel to get the bumps, veins and ridges. Then I applied any additional colors I need with sponge or brush such as the dead edges or the lighter mottled effects of the large elephant ear leaves. Plants were created a leaf at a time on the base using white glue. I think they turned out great and add a lot of visual interest. Moss was created by mixing fine ground turf with water and white glue, applying it, letting it dry, then lightly dry-brushing the tops. Ground-litter is composed of crushed up fall leaves and dried sheet moss.

Enough chat, here’s pics:

Well, it’s finally all done. Only 5 months of off-and-on work so not too bad. Now I just need to figure out shipping via an art shipping firm and pray that it arrives safely. Here’s the final images:

The diorama is in it’s final stages and almost complete. All I have left to do is to make some little crates like the ones Luke was floating around with the force right before he threw a hissy regarding the X-Wing being too heavy. Once the figures were completed I moved onto the seaweed for the X-Wing. The seaweed was made using stretched cotton ball pieces just like my “spanish moss” recipe. The difference was that I used a darker green-black and mixed more dark soil fine turf into the mix. This was strethed out and set into place with a soft brush loaded with Future.

Once the weeds were done I used 5-minute epoxy to mount the X-Wing onto the clear drip-supports and added the final drips using stretched clear sprue and clear acrylic gel medium.

I also finished the lighting using a flickering LED tealight candle that I converted to use wall-power instead of a battery.

Here’s the pics:

This week I’ve been working on the ground litter and finishing up the base water. The ripples on the large body of water are made by applying Liquitex Acrylic Gloss Gel Medium with my fingers to create the peaks and ripples. Finer ripples under the X-Wing were made with a piece of coarse car-sponge. The smaller pools need cleaned up a bit as they’ve got ground litter sprinkled on them I can’t clean that though till it dries.

The ground leaf litter is a combination of Woodland Scenics fine “soil” and “earth” tone turf and crusted basel and autumn oak leaves. I never thought I’d be able to use that WS turf stuff for anything as with most application I’ve seen it looks like bad railroad scenery. However I think I’ve got it looking pretty good thanks to some great builds at the MIG forums.

To apply the litter I first soaked the area with “wet water” which is just tap water with a few drops of dish soap. This lets the later glue app flow nicely. I first sprinkled the surface with the dark green soil tone followed up by the dead-leaf earth tone. Then over that I sprinkled a fine layer of the crushed leaves. Then I used an eye dropper to soak the area with a mixture of Future Floor acrylic, water and Prepared Matte Medium. A ratio of 1/3 of each liquid is fine. Once this dries the area still looks wet, but is set pretty solid.

Once I’m done with the ground clutter I’ll blow off the excess, clean off the water pools, then coat the water with a few more layers of Future to really gloss them up and seal them.

Just wanted to post up a few images of the progress so far. I’ve finished the muck-moss and have been pouring water the past few days. The resin water stinks BAD so it’s bee slow going since I can’t be in my workshop much with the chemical stench and loud vents on.  With my final pour I had some bubble issues. So pissed, but I’m fixing them and should be able to salvage it and make a silk purse from this sows ear. I have quite a few solutions in mind, but so far, many layers of FFA are doing the trick. After some airbrushed much and ripples it should be perfect.

Screeshot from the DVD. The ripples should hide all!