Everyday Decay

[Svedberg]

13 hours ago, Marklo said:

Wow, that is one fantastic brick wall.

 

11 hours ago, Trevor L said:

Excellent bricklaying. Very realistic.

 

8 hours ago, JeroenS said:

That is nice. I will remember this one.

 

7 hours ago, Mark Cassidy said:

Mate, thats awesome, truly inspirational building there mate. I love the bricks kinda hanging in mid air 

Thank you all for the kind and encouraging words.

[Svedberg]

I have begun laying out the scene itself.

 

 

The base is a piece of foam on which the brick wall will sit at an angle, just to make it a little more lively. At the front a piece of a stone paved street will show. To get the rest of the terrain, and the wall, a bit higher than the street it will sit on a piece of foam board. That's the black piece in the picture above.

 

Here is a picture of me cutting 4 mm cork into Belgian Blocks for the street. Yes, I could have scribed and carved the stones right out of the foam, but I just did a brick wall that way... 😜

 

[Marklo]

Ahh you’ve made croutons, no wait.

 

Still loving that wall.

[Mark Cassidy]

The wall is awesome, can i ask what scale your working with?

 

I did see online not that you need this for your wall mate a tool some guy made that was like a knife with multiple blades that you could use to score 6 lines of bricks at a time, next time am doing a wall I will try 3d printing my own scaled to 1/72.  BTW how did you get the patch of flaking plaster it looks so good

 

 

[Svedberg]

@Mark Cassidy, happy to hear that you like the wall.  I’m quite pleased with it myself. This is 1:35 scale. Interesting 6 blade knife. Something for Edward Scissorshand? 🙂

 

The flaking plaster is just some grey drywall spackling compound, applied rather thin, and when dry sanded even thinner. Then it was painted and weatherd with some acrylic washes.

[Svedberg]

The street was paved by glueing the stones one-by-one to the foam base. Madness? Anyhow, here they are all in place.

 

 

After which they were painted and otherwise treated to make it all look like an old paved street. I also took the time to

- Build and weather a barrel, supposedly used by some hobos for a warming fire. The barrel turned out a little odd. A real barrel is not constructed like that, but it will do. I'm after the impression. Not true fidelity.

- Dip some scale sized pieces of corrugated (aluminum) sheeting in an etchant (ferric chloride solution) to give them a rusty look.

- Make some loose bricks representing a few of those which have fallen off the wall.

 

 

[Trevor L]

Yes, possibly a bit of madness there, but the result is worth it.

[Svedberg]

2 minutes ago, Trevor L said:

Yes, possibly a bit of madness there, but the result is worth it.

Yes guess. And as your Steinman quote says:  "If you don't go over the top, you can't see what's on the other side"

[Svedberg]

Proceeding with the "landscaping". I wrapped the wall in plastic and put it down where it will eventually sit. I then covered the surrounding ground with some pumice gel (an acrylic medium) to give it some texture. By wrapping the wall in plastic I could make it sit properly buried in the ground without risking smearing it with the gel.

 

 

When the gel had set I removed the wall and painted the ground a brown color. As will eventually be evident (but not today) this step serves no real purpose at all. I just wanted to do this to make things look more "real" during the next step. Anyway, with the ground painted I went on to apply some static grass. But before I did that I test placed all the props (bikes, appliances and so on) so that I could mark their locations. I did not want any grass exactly at those spots since the things later placed there would then float on top of the grass in an unrealistic way. Here is what it looked like with 2.5 mm grass applied.

 

 

On top of that, but not everywhere, I then added some 6 mm grass, after which it looked a bit more tousled and untidy.

 

 

And that's it for tonight. 😊

 

[Marklo]

Looks marvellous. 

[Muchmirth]

The grass looks great. I love it when it’s applied all patchy, looks more convincing. Great stage when it start to pull together.

Paul

[Svedberg]

2 hours ago, Muchmirth said:

The grass looks great. I love it when it’s applied all patchy, looks more convincing. Great stage when it start to pull together.

Paul

Thanks. More work on the grass is coming. Some of it maybe a surprising move for some of you. 🙂 I say no more.

[PeterB]

The nearest I have ever got to a diorama is painting up one or two of the display bases that came with the old Matchbox armour kits, and the big vacform one from the Airfix "Waterloo Farmhouse" set. The work in this build is amazing - I wish I could have done something like this when I still had a model railway layout 30 years ago, though in that scale I doubt it would have looked anything like as good, and things like static grass were only just becoming available I think. I did use "Modrock" plaster bandage for hills and "flock" type grass but it was pretty basic.

 

Pete

Edited September 14, 2023 by PeterB

[Svedberg]

I have only been building dioramas for a few years. Before that I was on and off in model railroading for many years, in all scales from Z to O, but mostly N. But in all cases scenerey building was my favorite part. I learned a lot that way which comes in handy when doing dioramas. But I still watch for instance Youtube videos to get new ideas and tips. There us always someting new to learn and try for yourself.

[Trevor L]

7 hours ago, Svedberg said:

Thanks. More work on the grass is coming. Some of it maybe a surprising move for some of you. 🙂 I say no more.

Sounds intriguing. 🤔

 

[Svedberg]

I added some more grass tufts, and soma more 6 mm static grass as well.

 

 

And now, @Trevor L the intriguing step : paint all of the grass and terrain black! 🙃

 

 

Why would you like to do a thing like that? Firstly, if you use a variety of different vegetation materials of different brands the effect might end up a little off, often with colors a little too bright and shiny (natural colors are often very subdued), and perhaps not fitting the season or locale you want to recreate. One way to get round that is by airbrushing everything with colors of your own choice, and for this to work you would like a consistent base color, like a primer. Using black as that color furthermore helps creating fake shadows and depth. 

 

None of this is my idea to start with, but something I have picked up from various online sources. But I have used it before, and like it. I hope it works this time as well, and that I'm not making a fool of myself. It is always a little scary. 😄

[Trevor L]

36 minutes ago, Svedberg said:

And now, @Trevor L the intriguing step : paint all of the grass and terrain black! 🙃

😲 That's just plain crazy!

Reading on though, I can see the thinking behind it. I'll be very interested to see the results.

[Svedberg]

First paint pass on the grass - buff.

 

 

And then a number of passes with green and greenish-yellow tones, and some others. The grass-less patches also got some color. I wanted a somewhat dried out look, not anything lush, so I think I'll stop here and see what it looks like when I have added the wall and the decaying stuff, and uncovered the street.

 

 

 

 

 

[Muchmirth]

I’m interested in this technique, I’ve seen it on you tube, I like how you can manipulate the colour to be bespoke to the model.

Paul

[Trevor L]

That looks great. Very realistic. 

[Svedberg]

53 minutes ago, Muchmirth said:

I’m interested in this technique, I’ve seen it on you tube, I like how you can manipulate the colour to be bespoke to the model.

Paul

Yes, I have also picked this up on Youtube. I first saw it on the Boomer Diorama channel and then later on Night Shift. 

 

50 minutes ago, Trevor L said:

That looks great. Very realistic. 

Thanks Trevor.

[Svedberg]

Bikes, fridge and all other stuff glued in place, so I now consider this build ready and done. Here is an overview shot.

 

 

More pictures in the Gallery thread.

 

Edited September 18, 2023 by Svedberg

[Marklo]

That looks really great.

[Muchmirth]

Love how this turned out, would like to see more dioramas like this. It’s something we can all relate to. The details are superb!!

Paul

[psdavidson]

nice

Those garden chairs look fine in it too