London show prep part 3

I have had a good productive day today. The main diorama is finished. I just had to finish off the painting with more dry brushing and then adding weathering in the form of water streaks and bullet holes. The final touch was to add some ruined and fallen down telephone wires. I had found some interesting looking posts and supports so I used those for the wire supports on the house.

out of focus but you can see the wire supports

I have just remembered, the final, final touch was to add the glass in the windows- lots of cracks and holes to make it look fought over. I might weather the glass a bit tomorrow- I will see how it looks in the light of day.

You can see from this that I have high lighted the bricks on the piles of rubble as I know this is to display First legion World War Two figures and this is how they do their bases on their figures so I tried to match them.

This picture shows the wire better. I have tried to make it droop and look fragile.

All the above photos were taken in the workshop where the light is not great so sometime next week I will get it out side and get some shots in the sunshine.

The other smaller dios got more treatment today with the first coats of paint going on as well as more ground work on others.

I do this brown as a base on most of my European and American bases followed by a raw umber wash that highlights the texture and helps to cover up bits I have missed. Once the wash is dry I can dry brush and then flock although there won't be much flock on the above corn field. There is alot of trampled corn that doesn't show up at the moment but the dry brush will bring them out nicely.

This photo looks horrible but it is the first coat for my desert boards. I use a very dark brown as a base and then 2 more lighter brown coats followed by 2 shades of 'sand'. A long process but it gives the landscape alot of depth and interest.
Finally, today I nearly finished a base with a river in it. I had shaped it and textured it over the last few days but today saw the river come on.

For large areas of water I do not use resin. I fill the area with cheap wall filler that is quite watery. Once that is dry I cover with a heavy coat of PVA which smooths the whole thing and then after about 24 hours drying I paint it with lots of washes and dry brushes. This is the time I try to get the feeling of depth. I have found it works really well and the finishing touch is a couple of coats of gloss varnish.

That was it today. The next installment should see some of these boards finished as well as the beginning of the Africa Korp display- a board full of adobe building fronts. This is a worry as I only have a week to go!