Holland 1944. The Allied Assault Begins!

[Guest]

This is my first full on attempt at a diorama. I’ve had the idea of doing a street scene for quite a few years & scratch building as much as I can. I was in the shed scratching my head as I often do after forgetting what I had gone out there for, when I looked straight at my 3-foot bow fronted aquarium doing nothing & thought that would make a very nice display case for a Dio! The bow front giving me even more width to take advantage of. So it all went from there.

The houses are made from balsa sheet & the odd bit of card & ply.

The cobbles, bricks, tiles etc were made with air clay. Bricks were stamped out individually with a piece of brass tube hammered into the shape and size of a brick & the same was done with the cobbles.

The brickwork on the red brick house was air clay rolled out into a sheet then the same was done with the brick stamp & aloud to dry (use cling film between clay & board you roll out on. It will stick & you will spend another 1.5 hours punching in the brickwork again.) Trust me! I then stuck the brick sheet to the balsa with aliphatic & cut out the window and doors.

The roof tile stamp was made with a piece of plastic sheet & shaped into a rough tile shape then stuck to a piece of balsa.

The buildings stonework was made with balsa mould & air clay.

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Balsa moulds were made for dragon’s teeth. Then a mixture of silver sand & tetrion filler was poured in.

I’ve used about 3kg of air clay.

Paints used Humbrol enamels, Tamiya acrylics, Vellejo matt & gloss clear acrylics, Daler Rowney water colours, System 3 acrylics (for figures flesh tones over white primer) & Winsor Newton oils for washes

The figures, armour etc is Tamiya except the seated figure, which is by Stalingrad

The barbed wire is by Aber.

The aquarium is light with a 120-led white strip light through sanded Perspex with a sheet of tissue paper. Which defuses the light beautifully & gives a even light across the aquarium.

Sorry about the quality of some of the photos.

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[yak face]

Hi and welcome to the forum. WOW , you really are spoiling those fish! most would be happy with a bridge to swim under now and again!!LOL!!! Seriously though , this is a great build, loads of excellent scratchbuilding and top builds on the armour and figures , cheers tony

[Guest]

i have been looking at this all morning,and all i keep coming up with is,`its beautifully done` the colours and weathering are perfect mate,the brickwork is fantastic and the figures spectacular,ingenious idea for the fishtank.5*s off of me,i hope it has pride of place now?

mobear

[mossiepilot]

Wow mate, what a fantastic dio, it's amazing, really well thought out.

Tony.

[Guest]

I like building and seeing larger "busy" dioramas built.....

this is nicely done, the buildings are particularly impressive.

[papa 695]

Great work and a great use for a fish tank well worth 5 stars

[Guest]

As I consider myself a complete novice at this, I am overwhelmed at your response & Thank You for your kind words.

I can honestly say with hand on heart that I enjoyed every minute of building this Diorama. Even when things were going against me. I approached this build with “if it goes wrong all is not lost & you can build it again”. I got to say it’s been a very steep learning curve.

The first problem is a bracing bar in the top from front to back & slap bang in the middle of the aquarium. Getting the dio base into the aquarium after all the figures etc were fixed is going to be tricky. The houses can drop in place after the base is in. I thought if I put a looped bit of wire under the manhole cover & the same under one of the dragon’s teeth. I could lower the base in on lengths of hooked wire.

The first thing that taught me a lesson was the baseboard. I marked out the buildings, pavements & roads. After many hours of putting the cobbles in, I stood back and admired my work. The next morning I came downstairs to see the baseboard bent like a banana. Clay shrinks when it dries & I knew that but didn’t think it would have any effect at the thickness it was put on & the thickness of the board. The board was warped that bad it was about 2 inch’s each end from flat.1st lesson learnt. 2nd air clay can be flexible, when I pressed down on both sides of the board until it was flat with the worktop not one crack. I rescued the whole situation with two lengths of u shaped steel bar screwed to the underside to of the base.

I’m now looking at a 3ft alcove in my living room or that spare 7ft wall in the dining room that would make a good big dio.

[Guest]

Hi and welcome to the forum!! Very nice introduction diorama!!

Wowww....I can see there are many hours here. The aquarium is a great idea.

Cheers. Polux

[Gern]

Beautiful piece of work there! ***** from me too. Looking forward to seeing more.

Gern

PS Any chance of a name so we know who to congratulate!?

[Guest]

Wow great dio fantastic work 5 BIG * from me

[Guest]

Excellent work, your scratch building is fantastic, so much detail, great work!

Tom

[Guest]

PS Any chance of a name so we know who to congratulate!?

Thank you all for your kind words.

Steve

[Guest]

Ok!!! Welcome Steve!

Regards

Polux

[spanner570]

This is a cracking dio. Steve.

As my friends on here know, I'm a firm advocate of building summat for now't.....So this is right up my street, if you pardon the pun!

I do like scratch building houses, walls and the like, and your work is in this department is excellent.

Very well done.

Ron

[Guest]

Sorry about the delay in replying.

Thanks for the encouragement Ron.

I am saving up the pennies for my next dio. Fortunately most materials I have already, it’s things like resin figures to buy and an extra expense I didn’t need is my airbrush has given up the ghost. It is going to be a real challenge as a lot of my ideas are going to teach me some news skills after a fair bit of experimentation.