Bottles & Battles

Bottles & Battles – Grapes of Freedom is the working title for my next little diorama.

This post is part two of the diorama construction where as part one described the making of the wall sections.

The base is covered in a mixture of wall filler and white glue which is applied with an old brush. There will not be a lot of difference in height in this diorama so I apply the mix evenly except for the area where the wall sections will be placed where i add a thicker layer. The wall sections are pushed down into the mix and positioned carefully. With a flat soft brush I massage the mix up against the lower parts of the wall so the transition from wall to ground will be as smooth as possible.

Once the mix of wall filler and white glue has hardened I brush on a mix of water and white glue on those areas that will have grass. The grass I use for this is regular static grass of different lengths. I usually start with the longer grass and sprinkle it on top of the parts which have the glue and then I turn it upside down and knock on the bottom of the base so all the excess grass falls off. Directly after I do the same procedure with the shorter grass. The reason for using the shorter grass for the second run is that the shorter fibres finds it’s way in between the longer grass fibres and creates a fuller and thicker grass. At this point the whole thing looks like something the cat dragged in but no worries, it will get even worse

The rest of the areas gets the water and white glue mix brushed on and dried soil from a flowerpot is sprinkled all over in the same manner as with the grass. The soil from a flowerpot is really nice to work with because it contains very fine particles and also lots of other interesting bits and pieces that can be very usefull for diorama making. To make the soil really hard I drip the glue mix over the soil which sucks up the mix and once dry it will be hard as a rock. Now this really looks bad with the colors of the grass and soil making me almost sick to my stomach…  Well, just a little bit of patience and the next step can begin.

Now I’m starting to feel a little better. Gone are the extreme colors of the grass and soil and instead I have a softer more natural look which is more pleasing to the eye. I have used the airbrush together with different brown and yellow and green shades of Vallejo Air to smooth thing out. The wall suffered from some overspray but I will leave that alone for now. As you can see some bushes have been added against the wall and something that is supposed to look like grapevines behind the wall…

With this work done I have put down the basic groundwork for the diorama. Now a lot of effort will go into the finetuning of the colors and adding little details here and there. There’s also the decision of what kind of vehicle that will be displayed on the base and chosing figures will also be a tad difficult if there’s going to be some sense in the story I want to tell with this diorama…

Well that’s it for now, see you soon…

Sven-Åke