Read Part 1 here
The weekend diorama project has moved on significantly in
the last 24 hours, though we’re not finished yet!
Yesterday, I got as far as making a basic base for the
diorama from a polystyrene pizza base and a skim of household wall filler. Today’s
first job was to give the base a coat of paint to form a basis for the scenery:
because I want the diorama to be a muddy European scene from WW2, I used a
mixture of dark brown, beige and black acrylic artists paint to create a
grey-brown muddy colour. I watered it down a little and gave the base a couple
of light coats.
The ambient temperature is pretty low here at the moment, so the
paint was taking ages to dry. I heated my oven to 50C and popped the base in
for 10 minutes to speed the drying. After that, I got out some scenic materials
to add grass to the banks and roadsides. I used a couple of different shades of
green scatter material made specially for models and model railways, and added
a low hedge with some synthetic material again intended for model railways. All
this was applied over a thin diluted coat of PVA glue, then a very diluted mix
of PVA was dripped over the ‘grass’ using an old contact lens solution bottle.
While the base dried out between painting and adding the
grass, it was time to make a start on the tank and the figures. All parts were
given a coat of Humbrol primer from an aerosol can, to provide a decent base
for paint when the time comes. In this photo, you can see the two pieces that make up the small base that is included with the tank model: I decided not to use it, as I am (obviously) making my own base.
The primer dried out while I worked on the diorama base (see
above), so in the afternoon I was able to begin building the M24 Chaffee tank. This was a
fairly quick job in modelling terms, taking a couple of hours from start to the
80% complete build you see below. This is a Revell kit which was actually
designed and originally sold by Matchbox back in the early 1980s, and it really
is a great little kit. The parts are moulded crisply and fit together very
well, and the detail is really not bad at all for the tiny size. You can see
how little the tank is compared with the standard Humbrol paint tin in the
photo. You can see that I have pre-painted the lower hull sides, and the backs of the wheels, so they will not require painting when the tank is fully assembled - otherwise they would be practically impossible to paint.
Sweet!
I think it’s going to build up to be a very nice model, I
just hope the diorama base matches up to the same standard!
Come back tomorrow to see the project completed.
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