Не рыбачить- No Fishing Ready For Inspection

[Mark Cassidy]

No Fishing- Pripyat Marshes Near Chernobyl 1942

 

This is a fictional diorama of what might have taken place, its set outside the town of Chernobyl in Vyshhorod Raion of northern Kyiv Oblast.  There are three characters in this diorama. Hans, Misha and zhadnyye kishki (greedy guts). 

 

 

Today is Hans birthday, he turned 21 today and his commander has given Hans 24hrs off work to celebrate, what does a fishing mad German from Wittenberg do in the middle of Russia on their birthday? Spend it fishing of course! Its not like there was much else to do really.  Hans was part of the 213th Division that provides local security for convoys of supplies going east.  Hans found some line, fashioned his own rod and used some of the flies that he brought from home.  He found the little jetty with a sign that one of the villagers told him said No Fishing in Russian.  Such a sign was an affront to any fisherman and Hans duly took care of the sign, besides he thought this area is under new management. Hans hopes to land a good sized catch but he is about to land something he didn’t expect, a rotting old Russian boot!

 

 

Misha the cat, observed the human walking down to the jetty and in her experience humans tended to be a good source of food, particularly scraps of tasty fish, this human seemed friendly not like the other one the commissar, a nasty kick in the ribs from a boot taught Misha not to get caught anywhere near that one, although she hadn’t seen much of him recently not since the terrible thunder came and went. Now if Misha can just convince this human to part with something nice…

 

zhadnyye kishki (greedy guts) was a wylie fish, as he had grown many had tried to snare him, but it was like he could sense when something wasn’t right, when a fly was just to tempting, it was this and this alone that had saved greedy guts from the many dangers that these waters held for a Carp.  Greedy guts quietly loitered under the reeds and lillies of the marshes as he sought out his next meal.

 

The Build

 

I used ICMs 1/35 scale German Armoured Vehicle Crew, and I mixed and matched the set to get the figure sitting with the right pose. This is my first foray into figures and I was lucky enough to get a master class in figure painting from a good mate, Don (Cheers mate!) I think I definitely need more practice with figures right enough The diorama was built with a photoframe, turned upside down , epoxyed in  and sealed with bathroom sealer, next I used foamboard to build up the terrain and then used tile grout plus brown paint to form the terrain, I added some gravel ballast from the garden to give me the boulders. I used a scribe to create the three plastic side for the diorama then cut the fibreboard that was the photoframe back for the fourth side , painted it to match the frame.  For the pier I gathered some twigs from woods, and I had some 1mm jute twine, I used the twigs to form the pier used a hot glue gun to stick it together and used the twine as rope.  I took my first foray into oil paints and used some to paint the pier. The grass is a mix of 2 and 6mm static spring grass.  The reeds were a pain in the bottom, I tried a few things, I used the bristles from a cheap paint brush, as in one for your walls, I put some painted brown grout on  baking paper, soaked the bristles in green paint and when dry stuck them in the grout, I let the grout start to dry out as well and that seemed to work better than when I tried initially, when the grout was “wet” the bristles would fall over. The little tufts were done slightly differently the were painted then I took a small bunch and glued them with a hot glue gun and I dipped them in water to solidify the glue, they were then stuck in the semi dry grout.  The lillies are Fimo clay, rolled some flat, then used some metal rods as a cookie cutter and then further thinned the disk of clay, cut a notch in them , baked them and painted them (BTW I tried Fimmo’s green clay and that was a bust, it seemed wetter than the white and seemed stickier so the lillies ripped , not sure if it was me or the clay is different? ) Greedy guts the fish was just a lot of experimenting until I got the right shape for a fish, then baked and painted roughly like a carp. The boot and fishing line (black thread) was set on the base and the resin poured adding in Tamiya smoke to make the water murky. Three issues with the resin that I need to try and improve on, 1 bubbles, I managed to get most of them, however the area that was a right T$%t was around the reeds , I tried to get my mini blow torch in there to get the bubble and only succeed is setting fire to some of the reeds, so I needed to live with the bubbles, second I was pouring the resin in layers and I managed to get get a drop of water on the wet resin, there was a horrible reaction where it formed a whitish skin on the surface and when it dried I had several holes in the resin, I tried to fix them but it didn’t work all that well,  I will just need to live with them and be very aware of that in the future, lastly I managed to get resin on the Perspex sides and scratched it trying to remove it, I think next time I use perspex I will leave the film on as long as possible.

 

All in all a longer build but I enjoyed it , and I enjoyed creating the story to the diorama, I wanted to build something that was military related but like not a battle or war scene , kinda of military downtime type thing.

 

Any tips or advice welcome 😊

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Making The Lillies

 

 

 

 

First pour and Greed Guts In

 

 

 

 

And the finished results 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for reading this far 🙂

 

Mark

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Troy Smith]

3 hours ago, Mark Cassidy said:

 

Any tips or advice welcome

edit the post to just the finished diorama, and make another post in Work In Progress of the model construction,   and use small bits of the text to illustrate what you did in each.  Add links to cross reference each post.

 

Otherwise, a really great piece of work,  I really like the water and lily pads and the detail and backstory.   I'll @PlaStix  on this as I think this will amuse,

 

 

 

[Peter2]

The intricate moulding of the lilies, and then the delicate painting make these water lilies places which any frog would be proud to call home - or pad, if you like. The yellowing tinge on some of the lilies convincingly reminds us of how these plants may wilt after a while. The fish looks tasty too, if only Hans could catch him.

[Mark Cassidy]

Peter 

 

thanks for your kind words mate, weirdly one of the things that put me off buying pre made lillies was ilthat they looked too perfect for me, so am glad that they at least look irregular and flawed in places 😀. 

 

 

Cheers 

 

Mark

 

[Mark Cassidy]

On 16/10/2022 at 14:22, Troy Smith said:

edit the post to just the finished diorama, and make another post in Work In Progress of the model construction,   and use small bits of the text to illustrate what you did in each.  Add links to cross reference each post.

 

Otherwise, a really great piece of work,  I really like the water and lily pads and the detail and backstory.   I'll @PlaStix  on this as I think this will amuse,

 

 

 

Thanks for the tips, duly noted 😀

 

Glad you liked the back story it kinda grew as I built the diorama. 

 

Cheers 

 

Mark

[Bertie McBoatface]

Good story and nice diorama. One of these days I'll be brave enough to try a water diorama!

[Mark Cassidy]

10 hours ago, Bertie McBoatface said:

Good story and nice diorama. One of these days I'll be brave enough to try a water diorama!

Very kind of you to say so mate thanks, be brave and take the plunge lol They arent all that hard like everything else its about improving things on the next build.  

 

 

 

Mark