Wes Hawkins' Wrightson Frankenstein |
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by David Merriman
This constitutes part-2 of the Wes Hawkins Portfolio. We've already taken a brief look at John (Wes) Hawkins' figure painting expertise. Now, let's examine how this painter of note integrates figure and equipment kit parts into a sickening, puke inducing scene of horror and
gore: his build up and painting of this Frankenstein diorama kit.
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Whoever designed, built the masters, and arranged the pieces that make up this striking diorama kit, they pulled out all the
stops! This massive, massive multi-media kit has just about everything. Human and monster figures, hardware, little furry animals, laboratory equipment, and the types of literature one would expect to
find in a scene representing a Mad Scientists laboratory.
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Wes informed me that this kit is comprised of chunks of solid and hollow cast resin, vinyl, cast metal, and (poorly) vacuformed
kit parts. Wow! Of course the best sculpted, designed, and packaged kit is nothing unless it falls into the hands of an accomplished kit-assembler. Ladies, Gentleman, boy's and girl's: enter Wes Hawkins!
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This horrible scene depicts Frankenstein's Monster literally jumping out of his womb (the tube of bubbling goop) and attacking
his parent with deathly intent. The scene made all the more horrific through the painting skill of Wes Hawkins. This award winning diorama is a stunner! The boiling goop in the vat was painted with a
mixture of inks and water-soluble acrylic paints.
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The rich, multi-layered application of paints, washes, and dyes has done so much here to generate the intended 'feel' of a
laboratory built by a segregated and brilliant scientist employing tools and materials of the period - the early eighteen-hundreds.
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What a delightfully grisly array of carelessly tossed surgical tools, reference publications and trash - clearly, Doctor
Frankenstein was not much of a housekeeper … once caught up in the excitement of the 'creation' process (I know model builders who exhibit just such sloppiness once caught up in they're work), this man
was out of control.
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The blood splattered tarp; the bone-saw; the human anatomy references ... what a God-awful scene! Good on ya, Wes, totally
disgusting! In this sort of work, painting expertise is everything.
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Now, here's were we separate the common kit-assembler from the accomplished kit-assembler: What could have been just another
assembled kit with too much red, books 'detailed' with squiggly lines, and cartoonish colors instead, in the hands of an accomplished painter, has been rendered as a magnificent mini-scene of scientific
depravity. No real gore represented here.
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But, the open anatomy books; the burnt down candle; and the well-grained wooden pedestal, saturated in who-knows-what; all works
to evoke a sense of dread to the viewer. Wes reduced copies of selected anatomy illustrations and pasted them into the model 'books' to represent open books the good Doctor would have had on hand as he
pieced his home-built monster together from graveyard parts (Mary Shelly, the prototypical trash-basher?).
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Wes correctly approaches each model sub-assembly as a model onto itself; nothing is permanently stuck together until every
possible kit assembly operation has been completed. From sanding, to priming, to painting, to weathering and clear coat - each sub-assembly is given the kit-assemblers full, undivided attention. Note the
little 'gag' magazine in foreground (what is it with Japanese and Dragons?).
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Atop one of the resin pedestals that make up the Frankenstein diorama are two clear domed caped affairs. The kit domes were
crushed and had to be replaced. Also, the 'ark electrodes' that project from the top of each dome were missing and had to be replicated. That's where I entered the project, helping Wes by producing the
two domes and two ark electrodes. Here you see the Alumilite casting resin I used to cast the two needed ark electrodes.
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That's one of them you see in one-half of the rubber tool. The polyurethane resin here is a very, very fast curing, very hard
plastic that must be mixed quickly, and poured immediately. There is just enough time to make the pour, place the tool into a pressure pot, and take it to thirty psi before the liquid begins its state
change from liquid to solid.
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Creation of the two cast resin ark electrodes started with a single brass master turned on the lathe. I then made a quickie
two-piece rubber tool off that master, and used that tool to make the two resin pieces. This particular silicon RTV rubber is a very quick cure product packaged and sold by Alumilite (available at your
better hobby shop or directly from, Alumilite, 315 North Street,
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Kalamazoo, MI 49007) and is deserved of special attention here: You can make an effective rubber tool in less than ten minutes
with this stuff! You knead an equal amount of part-A and part-B together, and then mash one-half of the master into this as the rubber cures hard. You have to be fast; this stuff hardens in about
three minutes. You then spray some mold-release onto the face of the first mold half, mix up another batch of rubber, and then mash that over the master and flange face of the first tool half. After it
cures hard you open up the tool, extract the master, cut in a sprue/vent network with a sharp knife, and presto-chango, you have a two-piece RTV rubber tool ready for casting.
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The two cracked clear 'domes' that came with the kit were replaced with vacuformed units I made over one of the lesser damaged
units. The trick is to provide a 'heat sink' within the original thin walled vacuformed piece (serving as a vacuforming plug here) to keep it from distorting as the new hot piece of plastic is forced
down over it.
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After it cures hard you open up the tool, extract the master, cut in a sprue/vent network with a sharp knife, and presto-chango,
you have a two-piece RTV rubber tool ready for casting.
The new piece is, of course, oversized by the thickness of the material used - but in a diorama like this tight tolerance between parts is
not critical to the appeal of the finished display. Note an ill-formed vacuformed piece still nailed to the vacuforming frame to the right, one of several initial failed attempts at replacement dome
fabrication. After I vacuformed two good replacement domes, they were removed from the backing plastic with a carbide cut-off wheel (the best, no-tear method of cutting thin plastic sheet that has been
formed into a compound curve) spun at moderate speed on a moto-tool. This work done after wetting the work to keep the heat down - otherwise the plastic melts and the parting line gets all boogered up.
Note how the ark electrode (the metal master in this case) is used to hold the clear dome in place atop the pedestal.
Well, that's a quick look at Wes Hawkins Frankenstein diorama. Hope I did his
work justice here.
Wes continues with his innovative approach to figure/equipment painting. Case in point: just the other day I received an e-mail from Wes asking me if I had any ideas how to
create shop produced rubber stamps. That's a first! Seems our boy is interested in marking miniature tombstones!?… Now, that kind of out-of-the-box thinking I like!
While the majority of you
amateurs are still working out how to snip pieces off the sprue tree, Wes is out there coming up with new and exciting kit assembly and painting techniques. Watching guy's like this at work is what keeps
my creative juices flowing. How about you?
Wes Hawkins. What new horrors await unsuspecting viewers at upcoming model contests and conventions? Whatever the boy comes up with I'm sure it will be
something truly awful and disgusting.
Send your comments to Wes
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