DIORAMA
FIELD EQUIPMENT AND ORDNANCE
Building and painting field equipment slightly differs from building and painting aircraft models. Ground equipment is usually much more stained, dusty and muddy. In this case, it’s more of armour modelling than really anything related to aircraft and in terms of techniques used, it’s a matter of making everything more worn out and neglected with no air stream stains, of course.
Chapter IV
MAKING A DIORAMA
Chapter IV
MAKING A DIORAMA
BEFORE WE START
Aftermarket sets used in this build:
■ Signifer - SN32001 Forked lift USAF WWII
■ Signifer - SN32004 Starter cart USAF WWII
■ Hornet - HH4 Bare Heads With WWII Haircuts
■ Pegaso Models - PM-PT026 SS Tank Crewman, 1944
■ Verlinden - 1108 Oil Barrels
■ Verlinden - 2706 USAAF WWII Refuelling Unit
■ Verlinden - 1856 M5 Halftrack Stowage Set
■ MiniArt - 35101 U.S. Motorcycle Repair Crew
Tools and materials:
■ Cyanoacrylate glue
■ Tamiya cement
■ Tamiya extra thin cement
■ Scalpel and tweezers
■ Drilling pin vise
■ Masking tape in various widths
■ BluTack
■ Sanding sticks and files
■ Styrene sheet in various size and thickness
■ Lead, copper and flexible wire
■ Magic Sculpt
■ LifeColor LC27 Matt Clear
■ UA207 Schwarzgrau
■ UA205 Rotbraun
■ LC06 Matt Red
■ LC03 Matt Yellow
■ UA511 Hellgrun
■ UA208 Anthrazitgrau
■ UA046 Neutral Grey
■ UA028 Grey
■ LC01 Matt White
■ UA524 US Neutral Grey
■ UA605 Dunkelgrau
■ UA095 Sky Tamiya acrylic paints:
■ X-1 Gloss Black
■ XF-2 Flat White
■ XF-3 Flat Yellow
■ XF-7 Flat Red
■ XF-8 Flat Blue
■ XF-53 Neutral Grey
■ XF-58 Olive green
■ XF-60 Dark Yellow
■ XF-62 Olive Drab
■ XF-63 German Grey
■ XF-65 Field Grey Humbrol acrylic paints:
■ Matt clear cote - aerosol
First element of our ground
equipment will be Signifer - SN32004 Starter cart USAF WWII, resin model with only a couple of elements.
Two thin coats of light green are airbrushed on the main cart part, same mixture as we were using for our Spitfire interior made by mixing LifeColor LC03 Matt Yellow and LifeColor UA511 Hellgrun in 2 to 5 ratio. Scratches have been applied heavily with fine pointed brush and
LifeColor UA208 Anthrazitgrau, making sure we do not overdo. Try to keep shapes irregular and random, try to source some photographs from the internet of similar ground equipment and look for areas that have been beaten the most. Most heavily scratched areas are those most exposed or most touched/
stepped on. Small details like voltage gauges, various switches and buttons have been painted in
Parts layout of Signifer’s SN32004 Starter cart USAF WWII kit. Crisply casted with plenty of detail and simple to assemble, Very effective for any ‘maintenance’ diorama.
Starter cart painted in green mix and fixed to aluminium strip by BluTac for easier holding and painting.
few different colours, mostly as seen on some reference photos as those of this particular cart are a bit difficult to find. Next step is application of diluted Burnt Umber artist oils and we then treat it with clean dry brush until the surface is smooth and free
of any brush strokes, we will repeat this process one more time to enhance heavy usage look. Exhaust drum and pipe system has been hand painted in dark brown then treated with diluted Burnt Umber and then heavily saturated with ‘rust’
dry pigments to achieve burnt
and rusty look. Lead wire have been used for power lines, painted in different colours, again more by hunch as I just could not find a reference for those. Leave the part aside to allow oil paints to dry completely, for some 24 hours.
Next and final step would be
some drybrushing, again we will use Gunze Sangyo Mr Metal 218 Aluminium paint.
Lightly dip flat brush into the paint and make sure to give it a good clean with the paper towel before using it on the model. Start by gently brushing all sharp edges and raised
Fine pointed brush is used for painting on scratches and peeled paint.
Chapter IV
MAKING A DIORAMA
details to give it nice highlight and more three dimensional look. Oil paint and pigments were used on wheels as well, for this one it’s best to choose dark brown pigments but this will depend, of course, on the type and colour of the surface of our diorama. For a desert diorama we would use ‘sand’
pigments rather than dark brown mud, and so on.
Next, we are going to add more elements to our diorama setup to make it more ‘alive’ and realistic.
Here again, take your time to study WWII photos of aircraft undergoing maintenance to best understand the setup and everything that your diorama should have. In this case with my diorama, it was not done by specific photo or situation, it’s rather made up setup while different scene elements come from various photos, mainly from French airfields.
Most of those scenes had various wooden crates with spare parts and so we are going to add a couple. Styrene sheets 0.4mm have been cut to approximate measure for each side of the crate. Each piece has then been sanded with coarse sand paper to achieve natural wood texture and grain, here we would like to draw sand paper in only one direction, along the longer axis. Now, to make it to look like it was assembled out of a couple of wooden slats, we will measure equal spacing along shorter axis and draw lines with Tamiya scriber, to represent recessed lines between wooden planks. We can do the same procedure for our makeshift work bench and just add connecting planks made out of styrene beams, 3mmx0.4mm. Yellow paint will be sprayed on all wooden elements and later washed with Burnt Umber oil paint. Oil and dirt stains on the workbench can be done by dripping a few drops of gloss
Lead wire has been cut and used as cables, different colours are a guess in this case due to lack of reference.
Dry pigments applied to entire model by clean brush simulate dust and dried oil stains. Wheels would be treated with earth like colour pigments.
Drybrushing with Gunze Sangyo Mr Metal 218 Aluminium paint will further enhance details.
Lead wire is used for power supply cable and placed hanging over the bar.
Exhaust system has been painted brown, washed in oils and saturated with rust dry pigments.
black mixed with dark brown paint. Cargo trailer has been scratch build out of styrene sheets 0.3mm thick. Reference
photos and dimensions of G-518 ‘Ben Hur’ cargo trailer can be found on the internet.
The only thing that we would
need to source for the trailer are the wheels and those can be taken from 1:32 Tamiya US 2 ½ Cargo Truck kit or you can
purchase resin wheels set for the same kit, it’ cheaper.
Painting airfield ordnance is pretty much straight forward,
Chapter IV
MAKING A DIORAMA
Fire extinguisher is another thing you will always find on any aircraft
maintenance site. 4.5 inch rocket is something rarely available as aftermarket parts, easy and simple to
turn it on Unimat lathe. For turning various pieces you can use modellers wax, resin sticks, aluminium or brass rod, with amazing results.
Unimat lathe is an amazing and easy to use tool for making various diorama elements, in this case a barrel has been turned in just three minutes.
first of all, a couple of light coats of our ‘green’
mix, LifeColor LC03 Matt Yellow and LifeColor UA511 Hellgrun in 2 to 5 ratio. Scratches are done with sharp pointed brush and LifeColor UA208 Anthrazitgrau. At this point,
we can play with airbrush shading, first is always light shading with much diluted yellow paint followed by dark shades of black. Shading process has been described in detail already in previous chapters. Again, Burnt Umber artist oil paint has been used
Another test for diorama layout. Frequent layout tests can help us see if something would need to be added or taken away.
Bomb attachment rings have been made from lead wire wrapped around brass tube and then cut with sharp blade.
Finished bomb rings ready to be glued to the bomb.
Chapter IV
MAKING A DIORAMA
to finish everything of to get a nice looking olive drab colour. Bombs have been further treated with mesh cloth dipped in Anthrazitgrau and then randomly blotched on the
bomb creating impression of peeled paint.
With our ground equipment sorted it is time to take care of the ground crew. I was trying to find a suitable atmosphere
for my diorama and so the figures had to match that peaceful moment I was trying to achieve. Initial plan was to have two figures standing and talking but it felt too busy
so I’ve decided to go with one ground crew member comfortably sitting on an ammo crate while cleaning a small engine part. Here’s where it gets tricky as we are
Chapter IV
MAKING A DIORAMA
Custom text cut on vinyl foil will serve as a stencil for spraying markings on our wooden crate.
Wooden crate containing aircraft spare parts is now ready for oil wash.
I thought it would be interesting to have a cargo trailer somewhere on my diorama especially if loaded with various accessories we would usually find on maintenance area of an airfield. The trailer is quite simple in shape and can be easily scratch built.
Finished and ready to be painted, G-518 ‘Ben Hur’
trailer was often seen in Europe after D-day landing.
Light and dark shading creates contrast and excellent base for overall oil wash.
Chapter IV
MAKING A DIORAMA
Signifer - SN32001 Forked lift, shading and scratches make a simple part look busy
and detail rich. Small details and big difference. Attachment rings and fuse took a few moments to
scratch build and the results are very rewarding.
Mesh cloth dipped in Anthrazitgrau and then randomly blotched on the bomb creating
impression of peeled paint. Oil spills and stains can be achieved with airbrush. Hold airbrush close to workbench part and without pressing the trigger, pull it back and quickly release so the needle
‘spits’ highly diluted gloss black.
Difference between airbrushed and oil washed barrels. Burnt umber on light green
creates fantastic olive drab shades. Small parts have been turned on Unimate lathe, rockets, fire extinguishers, spinner caps, oil cans… cargo trailer oil washed and ready to be loaded.
Injection plastic figure from Dragon feature a lot of nice details. Milling bit is used to make space for Hornet resin head placement.
Scratch built barrel and fire extinguishers next to Verlinden oil can. Painted markings on fire extinguisher add to realism.
Fine sharp pointed brush has been used to outline figure details. All recessed areas can be painted with diluted dark brown paint to simulate shadows.
Boots and belt have been painted black.
Chapter IV
MAKING A DIORAMA
Chapter IV
MAKING A DIORAMA
Overall oil wash with diluted Burnt Umber works like a charm creating nice shades and warn out look on our guy’s clothes.
Airbrushing skin tone colour paint on figure’s face and then washing it in oil will create realistic skin appearance. Boots have been further treated with earth tone dry pigments while oil wash was still wet.
Final pose for our mechanic.
Hair can be painted black or dark brown with lighter colour drybrush to enhance details. Figure is placed on ammo crate to see if any reposing need to be done before gluing everything together. You can easily repose a figure slightly by heating it with hair dryer first.
limited with 1:32 figures, you cannot simply imagine a pose for your figure unless you are prepared to do major re-posing of the figure, which I was not. So, what I could do is to browse the internet for every possible figure or figure set in 1:35 scale as those are much more common. A German soldier figure posing as serviceman on USAF P-47, why not! With proper colours of his clothes he is just another poor guy trying to play his part in the war. I really do not go to extremes but rather like to make my work easier when possible, at the end who is going to notice any difference?! Hornet resin heads came in handy as original figure heads were lacking details.
For more realism our seating guy got a new, smiling face. It would be a bit unnatural to have two mechanics facing each other with serious face expressions and just looking at each other. New head comes from Hornet head collection as well.
Yet another test pose with a few accessories around. Maps and mechanic manuals can be simply painted on any home printer, treated with oils and folded a few times to appear more real.
Fine pointed brush has been used to paint eye brows and eye balls. Ears can be drybrushed with white to accent highlights.
Chapter IV
MAKING A DIORAMA
Chapter IV
MAKING A DIORAMA
Main material for diorama ground work is actually sand and dirt collected by the side of the road. Also keep handy a couple of sand paper sheets, wood glue and mesh cloth. Bamboo stick is used for levelling sand.
Diluted wood glues is poured on our plaster rock as well as on area around it, next we would scatter fine sand and dust on it.
Another view showing our diorama base sprinkled with diluted wood glue. At this point
we can use fingers or bamboo stick to level sand and remove excess. Once we’re done with groundwork setup we would seal it with sprayed diluted wood glue and leave a couple of hours to set. Wood glue dries clear.
Further airbrush shading can be done with various colours to touch up anything we are not happy with but also to create more contrast and add realism.
GROUNDWORKS
With diorama layout planned and everything else finished, our last step is building dio-rama base. After mocking the layout of all object on a piece of paper in roughly 1:1 scale we can easily determine the size of base for our diorama.
Custom made picture frame will be perfect in this case just replace the glass with thin plywood sheet and we are ready for the next step. Using sand, dirt and materials found outside to make a diorama
a thick layer of wood glue onto plywood sheet and simply just spread the sand and dirt over it, let the small pebbles and larger chunks go in as well. Start spreading sand in thinner layer and allow each layer to soak in the glue before spreading another layer. White glue will stay wet for about 30 minutes, more than enough time to finish this step. After spreading the sand and dirt on the base, we can place larger pebbles and chunks here and there where we see fit and to
wet, press down some areas of the diorama by your hands to make nice and smooth area where most of equipment and our ground crew will be placed. Set it aside to dry for a couple of hours.
for nice, rich and thick grass we are going to pour the stuff straight from the bag and a lot of it. Good thing here us to mix a few different static grass colours like autumn, spring or summer with emphasis
A couple of larger stones showing trough the grass, those can be added before or after we apply the glue and pour the static grass.
Autumn yellow grass has been poured on wet wood glue first. Be careful when applying wood glue as glued grass is hard to remove later on.
Chapter IV
MAKING A DIORAMA
Chapter IV
MAKING A DIORAMA
large clean brush to brush off excess grass from the base. You can now play with yellow grass and sprinkle a little bit here and there to give impression of burnt grass. You can add crushed dried leaves small branches and so on. As a last thing, yes again, I like to add highly diluted black artist oil to areas without grass and after that has dried, drybrush
those areas with light brown and tan colours. We can also scatter around fine white sand as well, just to give more contrast to our ground work.
Before placing everything on the base, we will apply one final spray with Humbrol Matt clear cote to seal everything in place. While spraying from the can, keep it at least 30cm from the base so it basically
falls onto the base like a rain, otherwise if too close it can blow off some of the stuff, like that fine sand we added. All we have to do now is to carefully arrange all diorama elements onto the base. I don’t use any glue to fix models to the base, there’s simply no need for that. There you go, making a nice looking diorama is not a big deal of effort or time.
This type of diorama base will take a few hours of your time but will add a lot to your scale model’s appearance.
As for photographing your models and diorama, play with different light setups and try using printed background image, this is effective way of showing different backgrounds and diorama moods. Happy modelling!
Larger area has been treated with wood glues and to be covered with green summer grass. Try to keep grassy areas irregular and random in shape. Also, note a few different colours of grass being placed on our diorama, some will be airbrushed and retouched later.
Various shades of green and yellow have been airbrushed on grass areas. This is t show that no matter what colour your grass is, we can always easily retouch it either by brush or airbrush. Note small piles of rocks, removed from work area and piled up, washed with oils and drybrushed with off white paint. Detail easy to make but greatly improves realism and overall appearance.
Basic diorama elements placed for a test, nothing will be glued in place as I am never sure where some of it will end up on our layout. Bare ground treated with oils and drybrushed with various brown pants.
Some yellow static grass was scattered over some areas of green grass. Dried leaves can be crushed and scattered around as well.