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On my workbench

Another diorama,.. actually somewhat 4 of them at various stages of completion are lying here and there.

Here is a in progress picture of one called Lorelei. Resin has troubles to set in the winter.

Various techniques for the Firebird diorama

I have less time now to do SBS in forums or my own site like I used to, but yet i thought I could share some of "my" techniques that i used for the Firebird diorama. product placement? for the most part, say this to my bloody wallet!!

Mr Paint -now it's been less than on year i found about those, but I now can't live without. Fact is, I have been using Citadel inks for decades now whenever I wanted some glazing on my vehicles (boats mostly). Now I just spray some of my own mixes over gradients of black to white primer an I get the colour and lightning I want. The downside to those (except the price) is the fact you just can't find any "blue" or "red" or anything for diorama making really. You have to go through "Albatros L-39 from Czech army 1980-1990 green" type of descriptions which as far as i am concerned is not very useful (wtf is an Albatros L-39??)

you see? nice direction of the light! thanks to that (oh dear) US NAVY gloss Blue or whatever, if you prefer a dark blue grey ;) (but i love you Mr Paint!)

simple trick here, as those are inks they accumulate in the recesses hen you spray too much of them! here it left the grey primed upper surfaces of the DT intact...

Mr Paint to paint a Degtyarev machine gun

Ääh, My old chum Uschi, and his lovely logo. His metalic powder I only have good things to tell about. for the use I have of those, any of the 3 pots he sells are equivalent and I always use the first one I find. Well, they *play with the light*. On some angles you won't notice anything but you turn your head a bit, the lighting source changes and then they're bright as silver! Love those.. I used them for the railway tracks of my Hell diorama to a great effect (I thought)

Weathering... I was first a bit doubtful about those ready made products all invented by the one and only Mig Jimenez. But then I tried them and I thought they were great. Truly. Now like every ready made product, I would'nt use them "as is". that is I can't seem to find exactly the right tint everytime I need one so I mix them quite a lot! The Blue for Panzer Grey and the more sandy stuff are among my preferred (and used there with regular oil paints)

AMMO MIG

Uschi Von der Rosten

The Firebird Diorama

Finished yesterday! or how to use that tank turret in a different settings than what people could expect. Next should be completely different.

Link here

Bronekater T-35 turret hobby boss

So this is a bit of a Bronekater, (Brown river monitor as used bu Russians in WW2). Of course the diorama will not be only this, hopefully I will post it tomorrow.

Painted with Mr Paint paints, AMMO Mig Acrylics and Paraphernalia + white oil paint.

AMMO MIG

Among my swan

late in posting, it is rather cold outside so I practise sculpting indoors where it's harder to take photographs. This is one swan I just sculpted for one of my forthcoming dioramas.

Magic Sculp + Duro, the usual

Floodlands (the 8 hours diorama)

So I have been putting in my head that I wanted to do workshops. That's it workshops! In order for me to get invited in cool place where i could actually meet the people I have been trying to create some "8 hours diorama".

Did I succeed?

Well no. that one (called Floodlands, gallery here) was done in about 16 hours which means the double. That means I will have to work on all the bottlenecks i have been experiencing, like here for instance :

Using a crap figure -here a Miniart Tanker, whose head and arm needed direfully replacement
Create the base beforehand -here a simple plastic box
learn to use the heatbox
I finally learned that you just can't speed the plough when it comes to water making which is going to be a problem..

I will probably find countless others! Most of the final hours were spent to arrange the scene so that it looks showable in the end

Gathering Floodlands references.

1/35 jackals

Magic Sculp + Duro, the usual..

Filling and sanding needed! A few corrections too.

Galilée

Apparently, my Galilée diorama is at the bottom of the right breast of the girl model. Gee.

The dead travel fast diorama

Finally finished! That one took me ages to complete thanks to the crosses and the trees.

Link to gallery

Technical data: the heads of the guys are John McAfee and Stonewall Jackson. Indeed I cast every head I work on so that they may be of use on later projects.

The figures are modified ICM ones (WWI Russian Infantry, #35677).

The idea comes primarily from reading Bram Stoker's short story "Dracula's guest". :

I walked around it and read, over the Doric door, in German -

COUNTESS DOLINGEN OF GRATZ
IN STYRIA
SOUGHT AND FOUND DEATH
1801

On the top of the tomb, seemingly driven through the solid marble - for the structure was composed of a few vast blocks of stone - was a great iron spike or stake. On going to the back I saw, graven in great Russian letters:

"The dead travel fast."

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