Hi everyone,
In the short time available to me I have been busy working on my little WW2 diorama. A very wise modeller once told me that it is more important to finish a diorama than get it perfect...and I have to agree with him. With this in mind, I have nearly crossed the finish line with this one.
By far the most time consuming were the remaining five German soldiers. I wont go into the process of painting them, since I have already done so in the previous posts. What I will say is that painting them up was not very enjoyable. In fact, the opposite was more like it. I found their scale and lack of definition very frustrating. At this scale, it is more important to give the impression of accuracy rather than the actual thing, but it was still a pain in the tender side. And these are some of the best figures in this scale! It is definitely 28mm and up for showcase pieces from now on. Anything smaller is solely gaming material - as well as their painting treatment.
The next step was to position them in an interesting and meaningful manner. I already had my mind fixed on how I wanted them placed, but more fine tuning was needed.
When I finally decided where everyone went I drilled holes and fitted them in. Later I placed paper clip rods in the drilled holes to protect them from the basing materials.
The pic below shows some of the basing materials I have used in this diorama. I have used mostly clump foliage, as it looks better at this scale than static grass, grass tufts, photo-etched plants, and laser cut paper leaves, besides other clump foliage.
The process was done in two successive layers. The first, seen below, was the initial layer. This is simply achieved by flocking the base with scatter material. I chose three different colours and blended them together.
The next step is the 'detailing' part so to speak. Here I added another layer of scatter material made up from crushed cooking herbs at the bottom of the inclination (it is the darker, brown material). Then I added the photo-etched plants and the grass tufts. Finally I went around adding clump foliage where I thought the sence needed more interest.
The diorama is nearly ready now. All that is left are a few details and then putting the whole thing together. Hopefully the next post will bring this string of posts to a conclusion.
So until next week farewell and good health from your earth bound neighbourly blogger,
NR
