How I build Dioramas part 2.

Hi John It may be good to start at the beginning of the project as I don't think many people on this forum have seen your plans, how you built the facades, how you made the bricks etc, which is all pretty compelling stuff.

It looks great!  It would be nice if you can post more pictures especially at closer distance if possible. 

I just started a thread on this over on the sister forum to this one, Model Railroad .A lot of what I do is applicable to any type or scale of modeling.The Victorian house that I am doing now, with an airplane sitting in the backyard ,could in fact be used in any diorama since that era .

Right now the problem is that this "how to...." thread has been running for many years.I tried long ago to post here but I could never figure out how to post pics on this site.I will pick it up where I am now in this project as well as add the new "how to ..." from the RR forum here too.We will start with the buildings facade.

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Well all good work starts with a little research but today with the internet this is all available to you right from your home.In this case I started with Victorian building sites,mostly row houses.I also asked the dollhouse people about this as they are heavily into the Victorian era.

Important things are like the distance between floors,height of windows and doors,different styles from the era,colors of bricks etc...

You will probably want to make a rough drawing with all the dimensions ,nothing fancy. What I do is use cardboard or foamboard for the buildings facade and then cut out other pieces of cardboard according to the scale and move these around until I am happy.In this case I found that doors and windows where generally taller and narrower(especially doors)than is found today.The idea being natural air conditioning,heat out the top ,cool air in the bottom.

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This is where I am now with this diorama,finishing off the framework for the facades.This dio is composed of five different modules all screwed together to make for a 63 inch long project altogether.The wood I am using here is mostly pine from the hardware store.I hate full scale carpentry as much as I love doing it in miniature,if that makes any sense ? This framework has taken a lot more time to do than I thought it would and I am glad that it is finally coming to an end.

The idea came from this picture.An real early EAA'r working on his what I call, his Backyard Flyer.

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.I hate 1:1 scale carpentry and actually am quite lousy at it.I will be glad to get this over with and get back to real modeling.I just don't know how the RR guys do it with all their complicated layouts and such.I have saved the worst for last,figuring out how the roof lines will meet in the corner.I will do it in foam board first and use it as a pattern for the plywood roof.
The framework for the facades is just about finished and I can start adding the 1/4" plywood.The frame is very strong as it is ,so the plywood will be there mostly just to cover in the area.The back will be 2 pieces, screwed on for easy access to the lighting etc....A small hinged door is also an option for bulb changes.

Hi Vespa,

I tried to do this once but with 7,500 pics in my photobucket  and because of its need   for lots of organization ,which I haven't had time to do yet,it is just too time consuming right now finding the proper pics to go with each

'how to..."

If you would like to follow my thread since the beginning it was all was posted on

http://www.theaerodrome.com

over the years since I started building dioramas.

good luck! Cheers John.

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.More and more I have come to believe that photography and the way your stuff is presented is just as important as the diorama itself,especially dioramas of the storyboard type.The frame, painting and lighting are just as essential in 3D as 2D art.Even "how to..." pics are more interesting when properly presented.
I have been fooling around in photobucket and photoshop as you can see.
Layering is something that I am trying to learn now so that I can have just the frame saved and add different pictures and text to it.In the meantime the above is an example of what I mean.
When my building days are over,I plan to do an on-line book of pictures and "how to's......" for my modeling buds on the internet.The best part is that it will be free!
The way I look at it is this,prior to having the internet I spend a lot of time and money tracking all this information down(I have been modeling for over 60 years)now I have all this at my doorstep ,it is time to give something back!

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.Got the framing sealer on.I use lacquer outside in the summer only, but I still managed to get a little high on the fumes,Wicked stuff!
Now it is on to finishing the roof.I think that I will use tar paper and wood battens similar to what I have done in the past.
Originally I was planning for the roof to be part of the frame but because it takes up so much visual space now I think that it should be part of the piece.
Nothing too fancy though like a shingled roof,mine will be plain tar paper and battens.why? because the black tar paper will downplay the area and the 45deg battens will help steer the viewers eye down to the main subject matter.
I hope!

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.It is now time to frame up the facades interior .Because some of the windows are covered with see through shades ,a backdrop color will have to be chosen for each room.This area will be lighted probably using Christmas light bulbs.I could use colored bulbs but when they change them I will lose the control of the color used.

Yikes!  This is HUGE!  I will definitely follow your process... thanks for posting!

.While waiting for the museum to visit me with their technical director I have been doing some experimenting using plastic in 1/24 scale .So far so good ! the plastic I am working with carves easily with hand and power tools when run at low speed.I am doing this in totally different subject matter than airplanes working with thicker plastic before I ever tackle a thin skinned airplane.Kit bashing plastic is relatively new to me so I am starting in mixed media primarily wood and plastic with a little metal thrown in.
Due to government priorities they have delayed their trip here until the 3rd week in Sept.Once they tell me how they want to display them I can finish up the first three in a couple of weeks.Most of the summer work on the Backyard Flyer is done, sanding ,lacquering etc.. I now need about one winter indoors to finish it.
In the meantime there is lots of new stuff to learn modeling plastic.

Your  more than welcome Andy, I am glad that you are enjoying it !

At present I am learning about plastic using large scale kits and doing a lot of scratchin' and bashin'.At the same time I am posting a lot of stuff that I have posted here in the past like painting techniques etc...Those pages are now lost in this already too long thread.I thought that with a little editing, what I am posting there could also be used here to refresh this thread a bit, until I get a chance to organize all this into an online book format somewhere down the line.

I forgot to mention that this painting method works really well for ramps,boardwalks,hangars,shacks, docks or anywhere the "old wood look "is required.

Weathering wood,everybody seems to have a different method here is mine.
The woods I generally use for model making are basswood,pine , birch tongue depressors and various sizes of coffee stir stiks.I have collected various widths and thicknesses till now.They are very strong and the raw wood has only been highly polished.
I like the barnsiding look and this is the way I do it.
Mix up a thin wash of paint using flat acrylics. Why flat acrylics ? because there is no varnish in them, to make the paint shine and who wants shiny barnsiding.For this wash I use Nimbus Grey with a touch of Raw Umber added plus lots of water.I brush this on the wood letting it soak into the raw wood.Do not use a sealer at any time during this process.After 2 or 3 thin coats you should have a nice gray with some of the wood grain showing through.You want to take advantage of the transparency of acrylics for this technique.When happy let the wood dry or use a hair dryer to speed up the process.This wood is now ready for use and should have an aged look about it. To be cont....

......because of its transparency it is necessary to hand select each piece of wood used for color,grain,unwanted out of scale imperfections etc.....

OK so now we have a lot of stained wood of various wood tones and grays.Now we will have to decide whether or not to take the weathering process a little farther at this point or not.If you will always have easy access to the wood like on the outside of a shack wall ,go ahead and use it as is, but if it is inside in a confined area you can take it a few steps further at this time.
(With this method no airbrushing is required and the methodology is very forgiving of mistakes.)
Get an old toothbrush with stiff fine bristles,then mix up a very thin wash of raw umber and water.Raw umber is best for this step as it makes for a nice representation of mud flecks,fly sh.t etc...Dunk your toothbrush in the mix and flick off most of the contents onto a sheet of paper with your thumb.When you get down to a very fine spray then flick it on your work ,either board by board or section by section that you are working on.If you have prepared your boards properly it with instantly sink into the wood and dry very quickly.Keep doing this until you are satisfied ,and remember some boards that are close to the ground may require a gradual change in intensity top to bottom.Later some may even require a little mossy green were they come in contact with the ground.
to be cont.......

......On the areas where you may only have restricted access to later on, you may want to do some of the detail now such as dents, nicks, scratches,putting up old of new signs,making rusty nails and nail holes and pre-shading with chalk pastels.
With the use of pastels on dry unfinished rough wood, this is where my method is a little different than most.On most surfaces chalk pastels will easily rub off but on rough wood surfaces they are quite permanent as is, with no fixative required.Remember I am doing a diorama here, so it is just to look at.If I was using the same method on shiny plastic that is meant to be handled,I would roughen up the surface to get a little tooth in it before applying the pastels and then use a pastel spray fixative over that.I will mark that on my list for further experimentation.

For now lets just deal with the barn siding look.OK so now we have this gray transparent surface with a little wood color and grain showing through.Perfect! Lets add some nail holes and rusty nails which is common with most old wood.Find a pattern that you like or just put a few here and there but remember you are probably( in real life )nailing into joists or studs which will create its own pattern.Rather than have a whole bunch of old boards with a straight line of nails running across them which is boring,you may want to create a different pattern.I often use a kind of zig-zag pattern to avoid this.......to be continued(the doorbell is ringing!)

The wood siding that I put on the model today was treated with a couple of washes of the gray mix.Some edges were left broken on the ends. Remember old breaks can be aged too but new breaks should show a change in color back to the original wood.

I then took a sharp needle and added some nail holes not in a pattern but not just randomly either. Then I took a sharp HB pencil and added a little graphite to each hole to make it look like a nailhead.Later when finishing the weathering I will add a drop of water to each hole which will swell the hole back level again but leaving behind something that looks like nails.I will then add some rust and have it running into and down the wood.The whole thing will be softened using pastels which are put on last after all the handing is over but that is still a long way down the road.

On creating old wood.
I almost finished the interior ceiling ,the only thing left will be to do some shading with pastels after the sides are finished.I used some long thin coffee stir stiks and painted on some very thin nimbus gray /raw umber mix (95% gray,5% raw umber).I then glued them on with carpenters glue to the underlying cardboard roof that was pre-painted burnt umber .I left the boards really rough and warped for the aged look.When dry I took a pin and created holes in the wood in a random fashion, as though somebody had quickly nailed them up there at some point in the cars history ,for insulation purposes.I then used a ordinary HB pencil and twisted some graphite into each hole to represent a nail head.With a small brush I then took some very thin raw umber and put a small drop on each pin hole to swell the wood level again and add a little color.Next I mixed up a very thin wash of raw umber and with a stiff bristle tooth brush I flicked on some of this onto the ceiling.You could also have handy a thin wash of the gray and flick this on if things get too brownish.The trick here is knowing when to quit and not cover all of the underlying wood grain.
The next couple of steps require that you be subtle in your work and don't over do it.Take a thin burnt sienna wash and with a very small round brush randomly put drops onto the nails to represent varying degrees of rust.Rust you say!! in the desert? Well like I said earlier this car only ended up here.
Let it dry ,and then you can come back with another small brush and soften the rusty edges using a little burnt sienna chalk pastel.Also the ends of the boards tend to soak up a little color too.Now stand back a take a look If your not happy with the look you can always come back and flick on some more gray or raw umber if you want more color or to slightly change a shade.Here again you can play with this all day if you want.Have fun! The pics in my photobucket covers each of the steps involved.

Here we are getting close to the finished product.I added a little shading using black pastel applied very lightly with a small soft brush(kind of a miniature make up brush).Try to be very subtle about this ,try not to overdo it.
If you blow up the picture(all my pics are 2 megs at least) you will see that the underlying wood grain is still there which is most important for this technique.Each piece of wood retains its individual pattern and color ,no two are alike.

You know the modern dioramist (word?) is soo lucky ! I am surprised that more of us haven't really used all the tools available to us for research and especially for visual playin' around.Sitting here at my computer I have available to me, in my own home,all the possible visual reference I could ever want.I can scan for the minutest detail and teach myself things that only a few short years ago you would have to go to film school for and even then it would be filtered through a teacher who has his own biases.
This is really the golden age for visual artists who want to take advantage of all the tools now available to them.
I never in my wildest dreams thought that this level of research was possible until just recently.When I was a kid going to the Saturday movies, my buds and I would come home and act out what we saw in the movies.Endless hours of childhood arguments over who did what or how, can now be solved instantly.
This may or may not be a good thing for our childhood imaginations but now at least we can get on with playing the game.