Small scale diorama work on El Torres display plinth

This week I concentrated on getting the display plinth underway as Cancon 2015 is only a few weeks (and more importantly a few weekends) away.

I started by gluing on a square piece of foam on top of the plinth and left it to dry overnight.  Then I rough outlined what I wanted the shape of the ground to be like and carved/hot wire cut away the foam until it was near to what I wanted.  Following this I sanded down some of the bumps to get the contours smooth.

Carved foam and rock glued in

I had previously experimented with different coverings for foam (plaster of paris, polyfilla, plaster bandages, texture paste) and went with polyfilla.  I wanted to get the sides of the foam very smooth so when painted you wouldn’t see any bumps or lumps.  Also I wanted to protect the foam from getting dented when handled.  Since you can sand polyfilla and it is flexible (an issue with plaster is that will crack easily on thin coats) it seemed like a winner.  So a few coats and some 400 grit sand paper and the sides were looking quite nice.  I made the top quite rough to simulated the ground texture.

So black - the sticks are where the figure will go

I originally painted the side in a flat black, but the minor imperfections in the surface showed up.  Luckily my old Reaper Gloss Black paint was still usable and that comes up a lovely finish.  3-4 coats and you have a great even semi-gloss finish that hides all the bumps in a flat surface.  Doing things a second time I would have just boxed in the foam with some plastic card and painted that.

For the terrain originally I wanted to have a small broken column (which the shotgun would rest on) which I wanted to paint in a sandstone like effect.  However due to the rough texture on the column (which made doing washes impossible) and my lack of skill I just couldn’t get what I wanted.  Perhaps a few more tries with the airbrush and really thin layering might have got there but I just was burning too much time.  So instead I grabbed a rock from the garden, clean it up and glued in in place.

Most of the dry brushing done

The colours are my usual 28mm basing ones.  VGC Earth washed down with AP Strong Tone.  Then a few layers of dry brushing with VMC Pale Brown and VMC Iraqi Sand mixtures.  On some bits I went up a lighter shade with the Citadel Bleached Bone.

Once the colour was set I added some scatter material and some grass tufts.  I still need to paint the grass tufts as real grass isn’t a uniform colour.  You need to add some yellow/bright green/brown normally.  Also I will add some leaves and perhaps a few reeds pretending to be high weeds.  The key is to add lots of diversity and height diversity just like you see in the wild.

Scatter and grass added

Once all the ground pieces are done it will be time for final alignment and varnish time.