This article was first published on the www.armorama.com website, here is the version i sent, complete with ortographics mistakes as well as a few last minute additions!
You will mostly find "how to do" concerning a scratch-built Tupolev plane as well as various tips concerning creating water and ground cover.
about dioramas
I've been modelling for more than 25 years, starting at a very early age always in the most absolute loneliness, rarely showing my stuff to people. This is great to forge some strong beliefs about the whole thing. As for today I can describe my way of considering my hobby with those 10 points below.
1 -The diorama is everything modelling is about, it's the meeting point of the manufactured object that is the model and the human input, you can –and have to- tell stories with dioramas.
2 -When doing your diorama you should not be influenced by any trend or by any fellow modeller for you will only reproduce pale copies of originals.
3 -You should instead be influenced by EVERYTHING; a trip in nature, archive footages, paintings, music… you should never consider this list to be closed.
4 -If you don't have a good idea to start with, or know you won't have any, wait for one to come.
5 - tuez pour l'ambiance. If nothing shines from your diorama, you miss your point and just picture an assortment of junk and people.
6 -You should remember that a diorama is a 3D thing whose advantage is that you can turn it around and get different perspectives of the same scene. You will therefore make an effort to not close the view of any part of it.
7 -You should remember that the nature surrounding a panzer is equally as important as the panzer.
8 -You should buy a book about artistic composition which will help you avoid scattering the work in pointless details.
9 -Whenever dealing with war you should treat it with conscience: you should remember it's a sad thing that destroys a man, even if he survives it. Avoid above all any temptation for historical revisionism -even slight.
10 -You should try to do something you can be proud of and remember that a diorama may be seen as some piece of art if your input in it is strong enough.
the idea
After reading some accounts of what is supposed
to be Russia at the end of the summer, dusty, hot, sticky, I wanted to
build those weather conditions. I also read recently an account of the
Stalingrad battle by a Russian author, and that book began with
striking reports of what a retreating soldier must look like, weary,
dusty, lost and nervous. So I wanted to do just that, picturing two
weary soldiers tramping in southern Russia or Ukraine, September 1941
being afraid by something and ready to dump a grenade at the first real
menace.
And then I found the idea, the two guys would be near a river standing
on the top of a wreck looking at something imprecise inside the river
which could well look like their fears.
The composition
The second most important step after finding a good idea is composition. Trying to find a good balance between the different parts, creating a great hotspot and generally speaking just spreading all the different elements so that the whole makes sense!
There's no other way than to pick a piece of paper and draw a plan. I think doing a perspective drawing of your diorama is a rather bad idea because you will be putting all your efforts into glamorizing this one particular view while the good thing with building dioramas is that you may be able to turn it around and see it from all sides. People will always ask and try to see your diorama from the most unsettling point of view. So I personally stick to side by side and "from above" plans. Of course, I try to avoid symmetry while searching for a real balance between different elements, I also try to avoid pointless details etc. the plans show pretty much the triangle like shapes I wanted to create.
Furthermore I tried to create interaction between the two figures, they have their faces close to each other, and this reinforces the feeling of interrogation and latent menace of the whole scene.
The plane
Well I tend not to trust science fiction much
as I really think the human already invented the strangest shapes
imaginable. So I wanted to have something made of metal that would kind
of point to the sky in order to create this diorama’s much needed
balance. I also needed another bit of metal so that the two soldiers
could stand on something. So I decided a plane would do, but I needed
some flat section so that the two guys could actually stand on
something. I also needed something that was actually POINTING up to the
sky and could look weird. So after extensive researches I found out
about the Tupolev TB3, a giant four engine bomber, one of the first
all-aluminium planes, famous for its Zveno variant which was designed
to carry smaller planes. It was obsolete by 1941 but was used
nonetheless with terrific results for those who were flying on it. I
found some good scale plans on the internet and some detail photographs
as well as numerous built reviews of the ICM 1/72 model. Finally I
found some interesting facts, like for instance the ridiculous
thickness of the aluminium employed for the structure and also the fact
that the crew complained that the paint was actually peeling away while
the plane was in flight. Moreover the tail section actually looked like
some Apollo shuttle landing gear. I had my weird bits.
So I used some thick aluminium foil I had bought in a craft shop. I
carved the lines with a pencil and added some details with plasticard
and miliput. I must say the fact that ICM put out this plane as 1/72
model helped me a lot because of the number of reviews that eventually
spawned on the net complete with great detail pictures.
I covered the bits of aluminium I wanted to keep with some masking
liquid and sprayed the whole thing with some various shades of dusty
green –nothing too bright as the plane is supposed to have been in the
water for a few weeks at least. Finally, I used some Humbrol Matt Cote
mixed with some paint pigments and dirt in order to treat the aluminium
and the paint in a similar dull fashion.
The landscape
It seems a lot of Russia and Ukraine’s
territory is very sandy. Banks of a river are supposed to be too, so I
tried to get a very desert feeling about that landscape (we’re still
supposed to be early September after a few storms that made the river
swollen a bit). After unspectacular modelling of the river banks which
involved plaster of Paris and fingers, I had some fun with paints. I
mixed some colour pigments with a small amount of thinner and got
something that looked like a grainy paste that I applied on the whole
of the bank. Once it dried I used a hard brush and proceeded to wipe up
the excess. Eventually I put some clearer paste on highlight areas and
another darker shade behind the plane’s tail.
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