Delphinus milliputus – A new species in the Mediterranean

[Crynsminiaturen]

Wonderful work dear sBerry. I love to see your dedication to the ancient world in word, shape and image.

[sberry]

Some more pics (sorry for the quality, I’m using mainly my phone for the WIP pictures):







More parts after priming:







In the meantime, the hall is (more or less) complete:










I wanted to have some color contrast between parts of marble = pure white and the plastered walls = off-white. After extensive tests and experiments, I came up with this color – which, in the end, I still find a bit too dark and yellowish. But if Classical Antiquity was really so white is a big controversy after all, and there are hints that at least some architecture was painted in rather vivid colors:


(Credit: Ad Meskens / WkiMedia Commons)

So I will keep my yellow walls.
Those red strings will be transformed into flower garlands, with the addition of glue and flocking material (from Busch):



Sounds easy, but it is easy to make a terrible mess at this stage. Fortunately, the result is acceptable, and I could finally glue the back walls to the colonnade front sides:

[sberry]

Wonderful work dear sBerry. I love to see your dedication to the ancient world in word, shape and image.

Thank you very much, dear Cryns. And I love your boat models - of course I'm using one of them in this diorama. In addition to your amphora carrier and your Roman construction materials: My workers need some materials, and your sets CM-323 etc. came just in time for this project. ..

[Santi Pérez]

Wow, Stephan. I haven't been on the forum for two days and I find your diorama almost finished, hahaha.


I love how meticulous yet fast you move forward with all your projects. You research every step you take to make it as close to historical knowledge as possible and then execute it with pinpoint accuracy. In addition, you have the ability to simultaneously cover different facets of the project (selection of figures and other elements, conversions and assembly of the same, balanced distribution of the whole, priming, painting, etc.), achieving spectacular results in all of them.

I am fascinated by the excellent progress of your diorama and I have the impression that with this one you are going to surpass the previous ones, something that a priori seemed quite difficult.

Do you have any photos of that project, dear Santi? I would love to see that!

I'm sorry I never took pictures of this construction, as well as of other cut-outs I have from different periods, as I didn't have the proper painted figures to go with them. And now all those models must be stored in one of the moving boxes I have accumulated in the basement of my future new house. Now it's a bit impossible to find them to take pictures.

Best regards, my friend!

Santi.

[Kekso]

Great project, will follow.

[sberry]

I just came back from a little holiday in Gotha in Thuringia. It is where Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, husband of Queen Victoria, came from. And they have a nice castle and a museum there, which shows among other things a number of wonderful cork models of ancient, in particular Roman, monuments:


Credits: Michael Sander / WikimediaCommons

So back to modelling!
As I said earlier, I wanted to have several statues in the diorama. There are certain figure poses that make quite convincing statues, and the trick is simple, of course: just paint them like stone or metal (e.g. bronze). But I wanted to have a range of different sizes, as would be plausible for the art collection of such a villa: life-size, but also some statues smaller or larger, resp., than life. Thus I needed something else besides just 1/72 figures. The picture shows some examples, from left to right:



1. A wonderful little Bacchus, about 75 % of life-size, I think. This was among the last figures sculpted by Leonardo Torricini before his sad and premature death; he had created a range of ancient deities. And definitely from my last order that I sent to him, so I hope I can do this rare figure justice with my painting skills.

2. An obvious choice: A guy from the old Atlantic set “Greek Army”. Sculpting and mold of this almost 50 years old set are still good, even by modern standards, but the poses are absurd – useless on the battlefield, as if they were specifically made to end as sculptures…

3. A figure almost twice the natural size, from Erik Trauner’s fantastic set of ancient busts and statues (Nikolai ACC 03). Perhaps also a rare figure today, I have no idea if this set is still available.

4. A guy in 28 mm from the “Gangs of Rome” game. Usually, I'm not making dioramas in 28 mm scale, but I have bought some of those figures with this use as over-sized statue in mind.

[Santi Pérez]

That cork model from the Gotha museum looks very nice, Stephan, although yours are better, even if they are made of other, less original materials.

And the statues for your diorama are spectacular, being a very good idea to mix them in different sizes. I only have two questions: Are the statue bases made by you or did you get them already made? Will the statues have a stone or metal finish or will you paint them? I ask because you know that most of the old statues had rich colours, even if most of them have been lost over time.

Best regards, my friend.

Santi.

[sberry]

Dear Santi, these are very good questions in fact, I should have addressed these topics in my post already!

1. The figure by Erik Trauner came complete with its base. The rest, i.e. all other bases you will see in the diorama, are scratch-built.

2. The majority of statues will be painted as metal sculptures (about 8, if my count is correct), while only some (4, I think) are marble.

3. Yes, in principle, one would expect the marble statues to be colorfully painted. However, this is a bit tricky: Painting some figures to truly resemble living people, and others to create the impression of a painted statue, requires a masterful painting technique, and I've never been satisfied with my results when attempting this in the past.

4. Another question I've discussed with archaeologists, but no one can really answer: How long were these works of art actually painted, and what happened when the paint faded? It's assumed that tempera paints, which are egg-based, were mostly used, and these paints can't have been very durable, especially in works that stood unprotected outdoors. So, was the paint refreshed from time to time? Or was the venerable condition respected, where after a few hundred years, perhaps barely any paint was visible? – In any case, I used this problem as an excuse to simply leave some statues white...

Best regards
Stephan

[sberry]

Statues, contd.: One of the art works will be a Victoria (the Roman goddess, not the British queen). I have been toying with this idea for a while, and after discarding some wings that were too big and assigning them to another project, I found an acceptable version. The basis is, once again, a figure from an Atlantic set:





The conversion includes 1. amputation of the jug in the left hand, 2. transformation of the plate in the right hand into a laurel wreath using thick acrylic gel, 3. re-shaping the gown, also with acrylic gel, 4. addition of the wings, of course.

The result is quite convincing, I think, and hopefully will be an eye-catcher in the finished project.

[Santi Pérez]

Thank you very much for your clarifications on the statues and their bases, Stephan.

That goddess of victory (Nike in the original Greek) looks splendid in that bright gold/bronze colour at the top of her column. The wings on her back and the laurel wreath on her right hand look great. And I love the original figure you have chosen to represent her. Both for the sentimental component of their antiquity and for their very high quality, Atlantic's Egyptian and Greek figures have always been among my favourites over the years.

Santi.

[sberry]

Both for the sentimental component of their antiquity and for their very high quality, Atlantic's Egyptian and Greek figures have always been among my favourites over the years.

Dear Santi, I can only agree with you. I had these sets as a kid, but left them in my parents' basement when I moved out. A huge mistake, as I discovered many years later: These great figures, along with the rest of my complete 1/72 and 1/32 scale collection, had fallen victim to a parental purge!
Fortunately, I was able to buy them again when I got back into the hobby of figures!

But one thing always puzzled me, even as a kid: How could Atlantic produce these excellent sets for Greece and Egypt and such utter crap for Rome...

[C M Dodson]

This really is a wonderful topic.

I have grown an attachment to Greece and Crete in particular over the last fifteen years.

Fifteen years of trying to learn Greek has earned me the title of, the Killer of the Greek language but I digress.

The statues look great along with the building work.

Looking forward to more modelling of the myths and tragedy from the original masters of the genre.

Best wishes,

Chris