Again guys, thanks for all your nice feedback
Some answer, Janne, tjena grabben ! nice to see you. kind of you to post some photos of my "Hun in the sun" diorama.
Kenneth the diorama is in 1/35 scale.
I will try to explain some of the tecniques I have used on the base. (sorry about my English in some places, but writing this in Norwegian is a bad idea :lol: )
Ok guys this gonna be a long one !
The huts are made of balsa and plasticcard. The logs were made of square balsa sticks, to make the texture I used a wire-brush. Rub the brush back and forth until you have the desired texture. This makes the balsa very "hairy" so I carfully burned off the hairs with a flame (be carefull the balsa burns easy !) Then I gave the balsa sticks a light overspray with Tamiya primer (the gray one) The logs were then cut to the right sizes and glued to plasticcard. In this diorama the huts are assembeled of 3 walls (the backside is only a plain plasticcard). The roof was made with a Scotch-brite sanding mat as a base. Different grass products (railway stuff) were sprinkeled over, finally the roof was soaked in white glue and water to make it solid and hard. Windows, wood walls and doors are made of plasticcard (make woodtexture with sanding-paper). The chimney is made of plaster bricks. The pigeon coup are made of plasticcard with wood texture made with sanding paper (80 grit)
The painting was done with Humbrol paint and some airbrushing with Tamiya paint. To get the weary look on the log walls I just gave the logs seweral washes with burnt umber oil paint. The allready gray primed walls with this wash is all that is needed to get this look. The other wood areas are also primed with Tamiya, then i paint on some dark brown Humbrol colour. After a couple of minutes i remove much of the paint (until you see some of the gray primer)again with a stiff brush soaked in white spirit. The roof is airbrushed with different bright green Tamiya colours (olive green and yellow-green) finaly a light drybrush with yellowgreen humbrol.
The main structure is made of styrofoam covered with Sculpamold (papermache and plaster). I allways work on small areas at the time since the stuff dries fast. When the Sculpamold is still wet I press in stones, roots and make track marks, foot marks etc. When the Sculpamold is dry I cover most areas with white glue/water and sprinkel on sand and small stones in different sizes. I also like to sprinkel on some "forest litter" at this stage. I made my own forest litter by putting small roots, moss and dry leafs into a cup. Take a scissor and cut the stuff in the cup to small pieces.
After 24 h I airbrush the base in a sand/earth brown colour to cover all the white colour left in the sculpamold.
Then I give the base several washes of dark earth colours and when this is still wet I paint(Humbrol) in some higlights and shadows and blend the colours together . When this is completely dry I drybrush with lighter colours. If I'm not happy with the colour I give the base an extra wash after the first drybrush.
The grass product I use is Heki Wildgrass, Silflor, Aber and Eduard photo etch, tree trunks from Bayardi and the most important, the stuff like roots and moss I find in my own garden.
The high grass areas is made of Heki Wildgrass (railway stuff) a great product to simulate "kneehigh" grass. This grass is glued to the base with white glue and aibrushed in different green colours and finally drybrushed with a yellow green colour.
An important note about this grass areas, is try to carefully blending them together with the earth areas. Try to use some lower grass like static grass along the edges. finally carefully blend with an airbrush some dust colours to the grass edges. The flowers are then placed around where they seem to "fit in" in a natural way. The small white and orange flowers are dryes flowers, sorry but I have no idea whats the english name on these flowers. The sun flowers are photo etch by Aber and the small branches with leafes are photo etch by Eduard. An another great product is Silflor, this is the small bushes/shrubbery with the small grean leafes. Silflor have a big range with many nice products. The pigeon coup, fence, broken barrel and bridge are made of plastic card.
Doing grounwork is like doing weathering on i.e a tank, you constantly have to think about how it looks like in real. Reference material is therefore very important. I find mine in other diorama works, in pictures and even in the areas around my home. The nicest tip thou is to take a trip to the countryside and get inspired
All the best
Per Olav
