First diorama - The Choice

[PaulinKendal]

OK, I'm one of the world's great procrastinators, but I've run out of excuses not to start on this. The three figures are painted, and I don't want to start building the feature tree until the base is at least part-completed. So start on the base I must.

I started by cutting a 12mm ply baseboard - it's 12" x 11" (don't ask, I'm of an age that switches between metric and imperial as the fancy takes me).

Then I started sticking on layers of dark grey 25mm styrofoam using gorilla glue. Weights are housebricks wrapped in brown paper (for cleanliness) - a neat trick I pinched off my missus, who used them when she was a bookbinding apprentice.


Then I began chopping away sharp edges.


Then the shapes were further softened with a blowtorch.

You can see that the foamed glue has melted at a slower rate than the Styrofoam, so I've cut that away.

I'm now thinking about coating it with Sculptamold and adding foam clay rocks. Not sure about the order here - rocks first? Sculptamold first?

Just to emphasise that these rocks really are foam:

[PaulinKendal]

I'm also wondering whether I should coat the styrofoam in PVA - I'd like to use the flexibility of the rocks to bend them around a bit, but to do so I really need to use cyano - and I think that'll attack the Styrofoam.

The foam clay rock is weird stuff - like a damp, greasy-feeling, slightly elastic plasticine. But it's nice and clean to use - squishing it into the moulds was a piece of cake compared with mucking around with liquid plaster, tapping it to remove air bubbles and so on. I just squashed it in and stuck it in the freezer. One frozen it comes out of the moulds cleanly, retaining all the detail. A few days curing and it's done!

[PaulinKendal]

Any advice gladly received!

[PaulinKendal]

I've not got a hot wire cutter, so the foam's been cut with a craft knife and the sides are far from straight!

I've got some balsa sheet on order to finish the sides - I'm hoping that'll cover up these sins!

[AlanG]

Could you not use a different contact adhesive such as Evo-stik or UHU or alike?

[PaulinKendal]

Ta Alan. Evo-stik might work - I'll do some experimenting.

[stillp]

I prefer Gorilla Glue Clear as it doesn't foam.
Pete

[PaulinKendal]

I decided to whack on some Sculptamold, just to get a feel for it and set up the underlying structure. Once this has gone off I can start thinking about the bare rock outcrops. I added some burnt umber acrylic paint - but clearly not nearly enough! Still, it should ensure there's no completely white bits to worry about.

I might spray it all a uniform brown, just so I can see the overall shape - at the moment, the grey foam and beige sculptamold are all I can see.

[PaulinKendal]

This is the arrangement I'm going for - the jar is where the tree will go.

[PaulinKendal]

I should say that it looks like I'm just slapping this all together, but there has been plenty of forward planning - lots of this going on:


That planning seems absolutely vital to me. Without it, I might've missed that my intended front view would've presented one of the figures to viewer like this:


... so I switched it around, of course!

[wotan]

Excellent start Paul. That base geology looks very nice. Just look out for too large empty spaces on a big base. This tends to make it difficult to maintain the relationship between the figures. With the space you have available maybe a little house or some sort of ruin would fill it up. Also don't forget that when you add the rocks, (which look very convincing by the way) they should bed into the base as though they are atleast partially buried and not just sitting on top.

Keep it coming
John

[PaulinKendal]

Thanks for the advice wotan. Re. empty spaces, I'm intending to make a really large tree. Like, REALLY large!

I want it to dominate the scene, pushing viewers to really inspect in detail what's going on beneath it. I've taken tons of pictures, but this tree, with its big, intricate trunk and relatively small canopy, is closest to what I hope to achieve.


You can see that there's a long dead branch, as well as some old branches near the centre that have broken, but with new growth coming from them. This is in winter, of course.

Here's a couple of images that show the combination of live growth, dead wood and intricate trunk I'm after.

With the rocks, they'll be bedded in with more Sculptamold - the first application of Sculptamold was just to get a feel for it and create some basic structure.

Thanks again for the input. And I'm really looking forward to doing some buildings - just not for this scene!

[PaulinKendal]

I've started on the tree.

[Jim R]

What a great idea and a great start. I totally agree that good planning is important. I find that wood glue, that white PVA type stuff, sticks foam. I do like those rocks - money well spent.

[PaulinKendal]

The tree is going to take a while...