Jim (30) van Dijk from Bergeijk is building a gigantic humpback whale. The work is full size: fourteen meters long and about nine meters wide. “A lot of people are amazed that such a beast just swims in the North Sea.”
The doors of the warehouse in Eersel are wide open so that the smell of paint can escape. This is temporarily Jim’s workplace because the workshop at home is too small for this fish. The thousand-pound whale hangs from the ceiling so that he can work on it properly.
This isn’t Jim’s first time tackling such a huge project. “As a young boy I always built carnival floats,” he says. He followed a carpenter’s training ‘to be busy with my hands’. And a day at Efteling changed his life. “That’s where I found out that you can also build sets.”
After training and internships at Efteling and decor companies, he was ready. “I was able to really learn the trade that way. To make your product with all kinds of materials.” He now knows what he is doing. Although a huge full-size humpback whale remains almost as great a challenge.
“Its imperfection makes it though.”
Dozens of photos of whales hang on the wall of the workshop. “I used these pictures to recreate the whale as closely as possible.” Jim makes the whale completely by hand. “I also have a 3D printer, but for something this big I prefer to work by hand. Then you can adapt to the project.”
First, Jim welded a steel frame. Foam came over it. He could then sculpt that foam. The finish is a plastic layer, which he paints in detail. The humpback whale seems to have been plucked right out of the water. “I want to recreate it as lifelike as possible.”
Jim reveals his secret to achieving that. With a brush he makes some lines of light paint on the artwork. “I am adding the scars so that it becomes lifelike. However, the imperfection makes it.”
“This will last over a hundred years.”
Jim is commissioned by Stichting SOS Dolfijn in Anna Paulowna to make the artwork. There it will be hanging from the ceiling of a new education center this month. “This lasts for over a hundred years. It’s super durable. It gets hung inside, so it doesn’t suffer much.”
And then the next assignment is already waiting. Another animal because that’s what he prefers to imitate. He can’t say what it will be yet. “At least it will be the same size.”
