Diorama update

Well, with the main parts of the diorama in place I thought it was about time for me to add the groundwork.
Looking at the film "Always Sunset on Third Street" the road appears to be compacted earth rather than concrete, asphalt or tarmac, so that's what I'm going with for this old road which survived the American bombs and hasn't been modernised yet.

I mixed up Dark Mud and European Dirt MiG pigment powders with fine sand, PVA glue and indoor Polyfilla.  This gave me a good dirt-coloured material which I could lay down and not worry about any white showing through.  The sand in the mix also avoided the beach look some dioramas have where the sand makes the surface look like fine gravel.

I made the road surface relatively smooth with some signs of traffic in it, and the area behind the fence was rougher.  To the rear section I added some model railway ballast for stones and some cork chunks for large rocks.  I also sprinkled on some static grass for texture variety.  The whole surface now needs to be painted and then weathered with washes and drybrushing to bring out the texture.

Here is the diorama so far (the fence and gate have been undercoated to allow a thinner dark brown which can be weathered without the white poking through):

Thanks to the flash from the camera it looks a lot lighter than it does in reality.

I also checked to see how some other elements now fitted in with this, and I think it's coming together nicely.  The car won't be a permanent resident on the base as I have a good number of smaller cars which will look good on this... and I'm not building around 30 diorama bases for all of these cars!

So after too long humming and hawing I have at last started something which will be finished and ready for display.  Only took 2 years, haha.

In addition to this diorama there will be one with a country shrine, one with a more urban setting with tram lines, a European setting for the Airfix cars, a generic country setting for assorted cars, and a scene purely for the Mini, a camp site.  There will also be one or two modern settings for those cars like the BMW MINI which are sold in Japan.  I'm getting ahead of myself though, and these are all long term projects.

The next update should show progress on the groundwork and the painting of the fence.