More old photos of my earliest dinosaur models...
No alterations were made to this one-piece resin casting, just the usual "clean-up" - traces of moulding seams were carefully scraped off, de-gassing holes were filled with putty, the casting was washed in warm, soapy water to remove any remaining mould-release. Then it was sprayed with a base-coat of grey primer to prepare it for painting before mounting it on a stone (which co-incidentally had the shape of a tridactyl ornithopod foot-print).
The simple black colouring ... is due to a more complex "giraffe" pattern not working out satisfactorily. After my tribulations with the paint-varnish chemical reactions on the previous Salas 1/35th Iguanodon, I found myself too fed-up to persist with anything complicated again. So, an understated "melanistic" look with a simple face pattern and spinal stripe was the final option. Colouration like this may have facilitated "warming up" in more northerly latitudes. [Here in Denmark, Black Adders are more common than further south, and our snakes are generally darker than their European relatives]. During painting a little brown, flesh or blue was mixed into the base-colouring to prevent the monotone black from looking overly flat. Some tones lightened with grey or buff were then randomly dry-brushed on. The very rough dirtying up was applied with both paint and chalks after seeing some extremely muddy rhino´s at a wild-life park. Corythosaurus is often depicted with a colourfully patterned cranial crest. I went the opposite way and chose to make it look like the plain keratin-covered structure of a Cassowary, applying semi-gloss blacks with some grey-buff streaks to represent flaking. Blue throat wattles also have something of the Cassowary about them. Those yellow "tail-flashes" were added to liven things up a bit as well as implying that Corythosaurus may have used it´s tail in intra- and inter-specific communication. Not only could it proclaim "I´m a Corythosaurus female", but it might be something for youngsters to follow after under a shadowy forest-canopy, or provide a highly visible warning signal when taking flight.
Finished July 2003.
Spike.
Nice paint up! Salas was very talented but his kits were always rather static IMHO.
ReplyDeleteGood point, Kev, that´s exactly why I chose to alter his Iguanodon in the previous blog from walking on all fours to rearing up in a more "aggressive" threat-display pose.
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